I’d love for this not to happen, but the cynic (realist?) in me thinks that one potential “upside” for Flake and his ilk of delaying the confirmation vote for a minimal amount of time (and a week is a minimal amount of time) before then voting to confirm, anyway, would be that any investigation at this point - even just a cursory one that lasts no more than a week - would give Flake, and/or others who may want to vote “yes” on confirming, but are concerned about potential blowback for doing so, something to “hang their hat on” and use as political cover to mitigate said blowback.
There’s been a lot of negative commentary over the last day about the rush to confirm, not to mention the ABA’s very public statement that it now believes an investigation is necessary, and I think some Republicans may see a slightly-delayed, post-sorta-investigation vote to confirm as being less damaging than a “we are not even going to bother to look into this stuff in the slightest” steam roll vote early next week.
They want to vote “yes”, but are concerned about the optics of doing so in the way that McConnell, Graham, Trump and the like were pushing for.
I mean, what kind of investigation can realistically be initiated, completed and then reported on in detail in only a week? Especially an investigation of multiple allegations, from multiple people, regarding multiple incidents that each occurred decades ago.
Identifying, finding and contacting witnesses who are likely scattered around the country; securing their consent to be interviewed; scheduling and then conducting interviews with those willing to participate; identifying and procuring possible documentary evidence; analyzing all the evidence; generating a coherent, detailed report on the evidence; etc. etc. takes time and I doubt that a week is going to be enough for a truly substantive investigation.
Also, while I suppose it may happen, I doubt that any report from the FBI on this would be of the “he’s 100% guilty” variety, especially since the incidents in question occurred decades ago, and some (or maybe even most) of the witnesses may not remember much or may even be uncooperative or outright dishonest.
Considering the fact that the Republicans have already tried to portray this job interview as some kind of criminal trial subject to a “beyond any reasonable doubt” standard of proof in which anything short of video tape actually showing Kavanaugh engaged in the acts in question isn’t enough to look for another job applicant, I can envision a scenario in which Flake, and others who want to vote “yes” (or are afraid not to because of real or perceived political conditions in their home state) will treat any FBI “finding” that can even be remotely construed as falling short of “100% guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” as political cover to vote for confirmation.
With such an even slightly equivocal FBI report in hand, they can then put on their solemn face, voice their “concerns”, lament the partisan rhetoric, etc. while pointing to said report that says “some people said he did it, and some people deny it”, claim that they took their responsibilities seriously, say that they looked into the allegations, and then vote “yes” to confirm.
I guess you never know, though … maybe I’ll be surprised and some Republicans are looking for more cover to vote “no”, and hope that even a brief delay will give them that either via something more being unearthed by even a brief investigation, or a building public backlash against Kavanaugh, or what have you. I guess we’ll see …