After the F.B.I. delivered results of its inquiry to the Senate, Ms. Collins and Ms. Murkowski holed up in the secure room on Thursday poring through the confidential material. Ms. Collins spent nearly five hours reading all of the interview summaries and reams of raw material from the F.B.I.’s tip line. Ms. Murkowski returned to the secure room as late as 10:30 at night to go through it again, after meeting earlier in the day with sexual assault survivors.
On Friday, the Senate gathered to take its procedural vote to move toward final confirmation. This was the moment of truth. Ms. Murkowski voted against Judge Kavanaugh, saying he was not the right man at this time for the Supreme Court. Mr. Flake voted yes.
Mr. McConnell and Mr. Cornyn were having lunch in the Senate Dining Room during a break when Ms. Collins came in. They invited her to join them and she disclosed that she too would vote yes on final confirmation. She later delivered a 45-minute floor speech explaining that the allegations simply were not corroborated.
Mr. Grassley, the committee chairman, was in tears and retreated to a cloakroom to collect himself. So were many others, but theirs were tears of anger and frustration, many of them women who thought their voices had not been heard.
The final vote came on an overcast Saturday afternoon. The suspense was gone, but the emotion was not. Right after the final tally was read by Vice President Mike Pence, presiding in his role as president of the Senate, a woman yelled from the gallery: “This is a stain on American history. Do you understand that?”
One level down, off the floor of the Senate, Mr. McGahn and White House aides assembled in the vice president’s office. Aides to Mr. Grassley and Mr. McConnell gathered in the leader’s suite for a celebratory toast.
When Mr. Pence walked down the long marble steps toward his motorcade, hundreds of protesters, framed by the Supreme Court in the background, chanted, “Vote them out!”
Justice Kavanaugh will report to work in the building behind them this week, his fate settled but the battle still not settled at all.