Partisan discord

Partisan discord builds over Trump Supreme Court pick

By ELANA SCHOR

Partisan tensions over records on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh boiled over on Tuesday, as Democrats insisted on access to all communications from his five years in the George W. Bush White House while Republicans tried to narrow the scope of the massive document release.

Amid the back-and-forth over records, a final confirmation vote on Kavanaugh could end up slipping past the GOP goal of getting President Donald Trump’s pick seated in time for the early-October start of the Supreme Court term. The Senate Judiciary Committee has yet to schedule a hearing for Kavanaugh, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) vowed only that the chamber would “finish this nomination” before the midterm elections.

Top Republicans lambasted the Democratic demands for all of Kavanaugh’s documents, including emails that he received but did not author during his stints in the counsel and staff secretary offices of the Bush White House. Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) predicted a “huge document production” ahead of the confirmation hearing, but accused the minority of pushing for more purely to drag out the process for a nominee whom most of them expect to oppose.

“They even want documents that came across his desk, whether or not he actually had anything to do with creating those documents or creating input into those documents,” Cornyn told reporters Tuesday. “So this is where the delay game is going to be played by our Democratic colleagues.”

Democrats counter that they are seeking to impose the same standard for document releases that Justice Elena Kagan received during her Supreme Court confirmation process, including emails she received but did not author as solicitor general in the Obama administration. Applying the same logic to Kavanaugh, Republicans said, is unwarranted because of his 12 years on the federal bench — in contrast to Kagan’s lack of previous judicial service.

“We could have up to five times as many pages from his time in the White House than we got from Justice Kagan,” Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said on the floor. “And we will have those documents despite the fact that they’re less necessary now than they were for Justice Kagan.”

Documents from the nominee’s time as White House staff secretary, Grassley added, are “both the least relevant to Judge Kavanaugh’s legal thinking and the most sensitive to the executive branch.”

Kavanaugh, for his part, described his time as staff secretary as “in many ways among the most instructive” for his future career as a judge, in 2010 remarks that he submitted to the Judiciary panel ahead of his pending hearing.

“When it comes to documents, people say: If we can’t apply the Kagan rule to this, then all bets are off,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Tuesday.

Many Democrats are putting off meetings with Kavanaugh until the document impasse is resolved, following the lead of Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). But Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) followed Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) on Tuesday in shrugging off that deference by announcing his own forthcoming meeting with Trump’s nominee.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has aired his own doubts about supporting Kavanaugh, given the appellate court judge’s approach to the Fourth Amendment, scheduled his own meeting with the nominee and left the room describing it as a positive one.

“We’re in the seriously considering mode right now,” Paul said.