Senator said he would only vote to approve nominee out of committee if Senate agrees to one-week FBI investigation in a dramatic turnabout

Shortly after Jeff Flake released a statement saying he intended to vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the supreme court, two women confronted the Arizona Republican senator in an elevator, identifying themselves as sexual assault survivors. Flake’s vote had remained in doubt until this morning.

One of the women said she had recognized from her own experience being assaulted that Dr Christine Blasey Ford, who accuses the judge of sexual assault when they were both teenagers, was telling the truth.

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“What you are doing is allowing someone that actually violated a woman to sit on the supreme court,” she said, in the tense and emotional exchange broadcast live on CNN.

“I cannot imagine for the next 50 years they will have to have someone in the supreme court who has been accused of violating a young girl. What are you doing, sir?”

CNN (@CNN) Women confront Sen. Jeff Flake after he says he'll vote yes to Kavanuagh: “That’s what you’re telling all women in America, that they don’t matter. They should just keep it to themselves because if they have told the truth you’re just going to help that man to power anyway.” pic.twitter.com/T7fSpyT69E

The woman, Ana Maria Archila, is the executive director of the Center for Popular Democracy in New York.

A second woman, named Maria Gallagher according to reports, told her story as Flake, giving the appearance of conflicted guilt, remained trapped in the elevator.

“I was sexually assaulted and nobody believed me. I didn’t tell anyone and you’re telling all women that they don’t matter. That they should just stay quiet, because if they tell you what happened to them you’re going to ignore them. That’s what happened to me, and that’s what you’re telling all women in America,” she said.

Flake’s aides attempted to usher the two women out of the elevator, to no avail.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you,” Gallagher continued. “You’re telling me that my assault doesn’t matter and that you’re going to let people who do these things into power … that you’ll let people like that go to the highest court in the land and tell everyone what they can do to their bodies.”

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“Thank you, thank you,” Flake responded, as they asked if he believed Kavanaugh was telling the truth.

“Thank you is not an answer. This is about the future of our country, sir,” Archila said.

For both women it was the first time they had shared their stories of assault so widely, Archila explained in an interview after the encounter.

“When the #MeToo movement broke out, I thought about saying it – but I wrote things and deleted it and eventually decided I can’t say, ‘Me too,’” Archila said. “But when Dr [Ford] did it, I forced myself to think about it again.”

“It was Dr Ford’s story that allowed me to tell this secret to my parents,” she said. “I now have to do the work of how me and my parents process this experience, and I don’t know how this is going to go.”

Flake has been one of the most prominent Republican voices standing up for Ford, telling the Senate before the committee hearing on Wednesday: “I do not believe the claim of sexual assault is invalid because a 15-year-old girl didn’t report the assault to authorities, as the president of the United States said just two days ago. How uninformed and uncaring do we have to be to say things like that, much less believe them?”

He released a statement on Friday morning saying he left yesterday’s hearing with “as much doubt as certainty”.

“What I do know is that our system of justice affords a presumption of innocence to the accused, absent corroborating evidence. That is what binds us to the rule of law,” he said. “While some may argue that a different standard should apply regarding the Senate’s advice and consent responsibilities, I believe that the constitution’s provisions of fairness and due process apply here as well.”

But a few hours after the encounter, Flake, in a dramatic turnabout, said that he would only vote to approve the nominee moving out of committee if the Senate would agree to a one-week investigation by the FBI into the allegations brought against him.

Flake’s announcement leaves three other senators whose votes are unknown, Maine’s Susan Collins, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

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Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee who, like Flake, has been a rare Republican to occasionally criticize Donald Trump, announced on Thursday evening that he would also support Kavanaugh. Corker said nothing presented on Thursday corroborated the allegations brought against Kavanaugh.

“There is no question that Judge Kavanaugh is qualified to serve on the supreme court, and in a different political environment, he would be confirmed overwhelmingly.”

Flake has been a consistent thorn in Donald Trump’s side, refusing to endorse him in 2016 and last year announcing his retirement from the Senate because there was no room for him in a party dominated by the current president.

“When the next generation asks us: ‘Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you speak up? What are we going to say?’” he asked his Senate colleagues in his speech telling them he would be joining a large number of Republicans standing down in the wake of Trump’s victory, something that analysts think will help the Democrats’ chances at the midterms this November.