Sen. Patrick Leahy and other top Senate Democrats are calling for a release of records from Supreme Court justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s time serving in the White House.
Kavanaugh served as staff secretary for President George W. Bush before he was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2006.
As Republican leadership promises to confirm Trump’s nominee to the top court this fall, Democrats are pressing for senators to gain access to a trove of more than one million documents from Kavanaugh’s time in the Bush administration.
Leahy said reviewing the documents falls within the Senate’s responsibility to fully vet Kavanaugh as a candidate for the top court.
“I don’t think you can wear blinders when you’re talking about somebody for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court,” he said at a weekly Democratic caucus press conference in Tuesday afternoon.
Leahy pointed to an email obtained through a Freedom of Information request showing that another member of Bush’s administration asked to loop Kavanaugh in to discussions around a program that involved torture of terrorism suspects “to spin one of the darkest chapters in our history,” he said.
Under questioning from Leahy at the time of his federal court confirmation a decade ago, Kavanaugh said he learned about the enhanced interrogation program through the media.
Leahy charged the email shows Kavanaugh knew about the program earlier.
“Read about it in the newspaper? He was involved with it,” Leahy told reporters Tuesday.
Leahy said it’s important to review what else is in Kavanaugh’s record.
“If the first one that comes up has this, what’s in the rest of them,” he said.
Leahy also penned an op-ed in the New York Times Monday calling for the Senate to fully vet the records.
Democrats contend Republicans should join in their call for reviewing Kavanaugh’s full White House record because they demanded the same standard during the confirmation process for Justice Elena Kagan.
Kagan served as an aide in President Bill Clinton’s administration and as solicitor general under President Barack Obama, who nominated her for the court in 2010.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., pressed the Republicans to join the call for Kavanaugh’s records.
“Our Republican colleagues are dragging their feet, and that begs a serious question: What are Judge Kavanaugh and the Republicans hiding?” Schumer said.
Senate Democrats have drafted a letter requesting all documents from the George W. Bush presidential library.
According to Schumer, Senate Democrats used the same text as a letter requesting the Kagan documents in 2010 from then committee chair Leahy and ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., changing only the name of the nominee and the presidential library.
“What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” Schumer said.
Republicans, however, say that unlike Kagan, who never served on the bench prior to her nomination, there is bountiful information about Kavanaugh’s qualifications through his judicial opinions and other writings.
Judiciary Chair Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has said that there is an abundance of information available about Kavanaugh’s record, and said that “all relevant information” will be available.
