Sen. Collins suggests Kavanaugh, Gorsuch lied during Senate testimony about respecting Supreme Court precedent

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, suggested on Friday in the wake of the Supreme Court’s move to strike down Roe v. Wade that Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh misled her on the abortion issue in testimony and in private meetings.

“This decision is inconsistent with what Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said in their testimony and their meetings with me, where they both were insistent on the importance of supporting long-standing precedents that the country has relied upon,” Collins said in a statement shortly after the court struck down Roe v. Wade by a 5-4 vote.

Collins added that the court “abandoned a fifty-year precedent” at a time the country is “desperate for stability.”

The Collins statement drew some criticism on social media including from Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley who dismissed the idea that the justices were dishonest during the confirmation process. 

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“That is not true,” Turley tweeted. “The justices never pledged to vote to preserve Roe as opposed to generally respecting such precedent.”

In an accompanying article, Turley explained that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh acknowledged during their confirmation hearings that Roe v. Wade was “important precedent” and “law of the land” but stopped short of pledging to oppose the landmark 1973 abortion ruling or ensure it is never changed.

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Others came to the defense of Collins including former Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill who said that Kavanaugh was in fact, a liar.

“Susan Collins is not a liar,” McCaskill said Friday on MSNBC. “I believe her, which means that not only is Kavanaugh a politician masquerading in a robe, he’s a liar on top of that.” 

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Collins’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.‘

The Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling concluded that abortion is not a right guaranteed by the Constitution and should instead be decided by voters at the state level. 

“We end this opinion where we began. Abortion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the court’s opinion.