Brett Kavanaugh, U.S. Supreme Court associate justice nominee for President Donald Trump, is sworn in during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, D.C. Photo: Saul Loeb/Pool via Bloomberg

More Democrats are calling to impeach U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh over allegations of sexual misconduct, but their calls for his removal are unlikely to gain traction any time soon.

While some Democratic lawmakers say Kavanaugh should be impeached after an excerpt from a new book by a pair of New York Times reporters showed they were able to corroborate an allegation of sexual assault against Kavanaugh and revealed a third claim, any potential effort seems to be at a standstill on Capitol Hill.

Impeaching Kavanaugh is certainly a political impossibility, as it would require two-thirds of the GOP-controlled Senate to vote for his removal.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham tweeted Monday, "As Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I promise you Justice Kavanaugh will not be impeached over these scurrilous accusations."

And House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler signaled Monday that his panel will not push forward with an impeachment process against Kavanaugh at this time, saying the committee's focus is currently on whether to impeach President Donald Trump.

He said during an interview with WNYC that members of the Judiciary Committee will question FBI Director Christopher Wray at a hearing scheduled for next month about the FBI's investigation into the allegations against Kavanaugh, but made it clear that the committee won't consider any further proceedings until that happens.

"What's relevant now is, did he lie to the Senate?" Nadler said, adding that his committee is "concentrating our resources on whether to impeach the president."

Despite the strong unlikelihood of a Kavanaugh impeachment, it isn't stopping Democrats, including several members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and presidential contenders from calling for his removal.

Judiciary Committee members Sens. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker have both called for Kavanaugh's impeachment, as has Sen. Elizabeth Warren, former Rep. Beto O'Rourke and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro.

Senate Judiciary Committee Democrat Mazie Hirono called on the House Judiciary Committee to start an impeachment inquiry into whether Kavanaugh lied to the Senate about the allegations of sexual assault.

"What's clear is that the Republicans wanted this guy to be on the Supreme Court with a lifetime appointment so badly that they actually told the FBI to limit their investigation the second time around," she said.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, did not answer questions about whether she would back impeaching Kavanaugh.

"I think the problem is that the FBI did not do the investigations that we had hoped they would do," Feinstein said. "In the minority, you don't have much."

"I think we need to clear this up," she added.

Others, like Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, Senate Judiciary Committee member Amy Klobuchar and former Vice President Joe Biden, have instead called for a further investigation into the allegations.

Lawmakers are divided along party lines over how to handle claims first published in The New York Times over the weekend.

Times reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly write in their forthcoming book "The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation," that they were able to find several people to corroborate the account of Deborah Ramirez, who alleges that Kavanaugh had thrust his penis near her face during a party at Yale while they were both students.

The book also says that former Yale classmate and ex-Williams & Connolly attorney Max Stier went to Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Chris Coons last fall with another allegation of sexual misconduct by Kavanaugh.

In a letter sent to Wray on Oct. 2, 2018, Coons urged the FBI to follow up with Stier, now the founding president and CEO of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, according to The Washington Post. Stier, according to The Times excerpt, said that other male classmates at Yale put Kavanaugh's penis into the hands of an inebriated female classmate.

Nadler and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet Rep. Hank Johnson last month also requested that the National Archives and Records Administration release records pertaining to Kavanaugh's time in the White House under former President George W. Bush.

Nadler said during the WNYC interview Monday that he considers Kavanaugh's confirmation proceedings to be a "sham," in part because all of the records at the National Archives were not released before senators were able to vote on his nomination.

Republicans in turn have accused Democrats of pushing forward with a smear campaign against Kavanaugh. They're seizing on a correction issued to The New York Times piece on the new Kavanaugh book excerpt to fuel their claims, as the update states that friends of the female classmate at the center of the new allegation say the woman doesn't remember the incident.

"The far left's willingness to seize on completely uncorroborated and unsubstantiated allegations during last year's confirmation process was a dark and embarrassing chapter for the Senate," GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tweeted Sunday. "Fortunately a majority of Senators and the American people rallied behind timeless principles such as due process and the presumption of innocence. I look forward to many years of service to come from Justice Kavanaugh."

And during a floor speech Monday, McConnell alleged that Democrats are waging a "deliberate effort to attack judicial independence."

Trump defended Kavanaugh and went after those making the allegations against the justice in a series of tweets that began over the weekend and continued into Monday morning.

"The one who is actually being assaulted is Justice Kavanaugh—Assaulted by lies and Fake News!" the president tweeted Monday. "This is all about the LameStream Media working with their partner, the Dems."

Kavanaugh and one of the woman accusing him of sexual assault when they were both teenagers, Christine Blasey Ford, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee last September about the allegations.

Ford told lawmakers at the time that she is "100 percent" certain that Kavanaugh assaulted her at a social gathering in the 1980s. Kavanaugh, in turn, has denied all of the allegations.

Kavanaugh has, so far, remained silent on the allegations as they've resurfaced. He was the subject of several ethics complaints over his conduct during his confirmation hearings, during which he fiercely and emotionally defended himself against the claims.

But judicial committees have found that Kavanaugh is no longer subject to the complaints, as the rules of conduct don't apply to Supreme Court justices. He was a judge for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for D.C. at the time of the hearings.

Some Senate Democrats are now saying that the rules should be changed to allow the complaints to move forward.

"It's past time for #SCOTUS to voluntarily adopt a BINDING code of judicial conduct that empowers the Judicial Council to investigate serious ethics complaints filed against Kavanaugh," Sen. Tammy Duckworth tweeted Monday.

Hirono said that she too would back ethical requirements for the justices.

"There's absolutely no reason the Supreme Court should not have these kinds of ethical provisions," she said.

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