WASHINGTON, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- Some Democratic presidential candidates have called for impeaching Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh after new revelation of his alleged sexual misconduct, but senior Democrats in Congress have turned down the request.
"He must be impeached," Kamala Harris, U.S. senator from California and Democratic candidate running for the 2020 presidential campaign, said of Kavanaugh in a tweet she sent Sunday and pinned to the top of her Twitter page.
Harris tweeted about the justice again on Monday, after a Saturday report by the New York Times revealing new allegations of Kavanagh's misbehavior stirred heated discussion among politicians. The senator said the process that confirmed Kavanaugh's justice post "lacked any integrity."
"There has never been a meaningful investigation into these allegations," she added, referring to multiple allegations pointing to Kavanaugh's sexual abuse scandals.
Senior Democrats in Congress, however, acted quickly to quell the impeachment rhetoric. "Get real," Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, was quoted by Politico as saying Monday.
"We've got to get beyond this 'impeachment is the answer to every problem.' It's not realistic," Durbin said. "If that's how we are identified in Congress, as the impeachment Congress, we run the risk that people will feel we're ignoring the issues that mean a lot to them as families."
House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, a Democrat from the state of New York, also dismissed the idea of an impeachment inquiry. He told a radio interview Monday the impeachment is "a consequential action, which we have to be able to justify," according to Politico.
Harris is not alone in calling for impeaching the embattled justice. Julian Castro, also a Democratic presidential hopeful, tweeted Sunday that Kavanaugh and "the Trump administration knew about corroborating witnesses and additional allegations of his sexual abuse and kept them quiet."
Castro, who formerly headed the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, added that it's clear Kavanaugh "lied under oath and he must be impeached."
Elizabeth Warren, Democratic senator from Massachusetts who's also running for president, said the Senate confirmed Kavanaugh as Supreme Court Justice "without thorough examination of the allegations against him," adding the newest revelations are disturbing.
