[S]en. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., came to the third day of hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh armed with documents that he said would show that the longtime Republican staffer knowingly received stolen emails almost two decades ago.
However, the senator was still unable to land a punch as Kavanaugh continued to claim that nothing in the emails indicated to him that they were obtained in an untoward manner.
Vermont’s senior senator of Vermont built upon a line of questioning he began on Wednesday, pressing Kavanaugh on emails between him and then fellow Republican operative Manuel Miranda, who was responsible for promulgating stolen information from Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee during Kavanaugh’s time as a lawyer for the White House counsel under President George W. Bush.
Leahy asked committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, to release the documents to the public before Thursday’s proceedings, and got his wish. During his time questioning the nominee, Leahy asked Kavanaugh about whether receiving emails about Democratic strategies marked “highly confidential” or “take no action on this” raised any “red flags.”
He described a particular email marked confidential from the staff of then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Dl., recommending that he not attend a committee hearing.
BREAKING: Kavanaugh testified he never received any docs that even “appeared to … have been drafted or prepared by Democratic staff.” Well, he got 8 pages of material taken VERBATIM from my files, obviously written by Dem staff, LABELED “not [for] distribution”. pic.twitter.com/eFlIBZ0Z1W
— Sen. Patrick Leahy (@SenatorLeahy) September 6, 2018
Kavanaugh said no suspicions had been raised by the information he received from the Republican operative because most of what was discussed was commonly shared between the White House and Senate staff members.
“It all seemed consistent with the usual kinds of discussions that happen and sometimes people do say things of ‘here’s what my boss is thinking, but don’t share it around,’” Kavanaugh said.
Leahy continued to push Kavanaugh on this, saying he could not fathom how clear references to sensitive information in the emails did not make Kavanaugh suspect something improper.
“I was born at night but not last night,” Leahy said, “and if I found I had something that somebody said ‘we’ve stolen this’ or ‘don’t tell anybody we have this’ — I think it would raise a red flag.”
Leahy then reiterated the need to have more of Kavanaugh’s White House records available before a vote confirming the nominee and asked the nominee if additional emails from the Republican operative would be found in unreleased documents.
Kavanaugh said that he is not “involved in the documents process” and does not “know what’s in them.”
Leahy stared at Kavanaugh before saying “that is convenient.” The senator then repeated a Democratic refrain that an appointment to the Supreme Court deserves proper vetting and the confirmation hearing is incomplete without Kavanaugh’s White House documents.
“That’s not fair to us and, frankly Judge it’s not fair to you,” Leahy said. “You’ve probably been told you have the votes to be confirmed so you don’t have to care, but I care. I care about the integrity of the Supreme Court. I care about who’s on there. I think you should care what’s in that just as we should care what’s in it.”
Leahy ended his 20 minutes of questioning by asking Kavanaugh about whether the second amendment leaves room for firearms created by a 3-D printer to be regulated or banned.
Kavanaugh responded that it would be wrong for a sitting judge to comment on a case that could soon be litigated.
“I think there might be litigation coming on that, Senator. So consistent with judicial independence principles, I shouldn’t comment on a potential case like that,” the judge said.
