Schumer stalling on Kavanaugh

Schumer stalling on Kavanaugh meeting deepens White House rift

The Senate minority leader has yet to arrange a meeting with President Donald Trump's Supreme Court pick.

By LORRAINE WOELLERT

Senate Democrats are snubbing Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh, another salvo in the deepening cold war between President Donald Trump and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

The politically strategic slight has raised hackles at the White House, which has been reaching out to Senate Democrats to schedule meetings but has found itself rebuffed at every turn. Some Democrats have said they won’t meet with Kavanaugh until Schumer does. Others have more benignly cited scheduling conflicts.

Kavanaugh has made the rounds to nearly two dozen Republican senators since his nomination July 9, but so far has scheduled no meetings with Democrats.

“Judge Kavanaugh is ready and willing to meet with Senators that are willing to meet with him,” White House spokesman Raj Shah said in a written statement. He declined further comment.

Schumer has refused to meet with Kavanaugh until he wins Republican assurances that the nominee’s voluminous document cache, including materials from his years in the Bush White House, is made available for review. Senate Democrats so far have remained unified behind Schumer, playing to the liberal base that has pulled out all the stops to block Kavanaugh’s confirmation and denying the White House photo opportunities.

Tradition holds that Supreme Court nominees meet first with leadership from both parties before paying calls on rank-and-file senators, but it’s not clear how long Schumer can hold the caucus together. Some Democrats, including Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, two potential deciding vote on confirmation, are making plans for sit-downs with the nominee.

Schumer has demanded that Republicans adhere to what he calls the “Kagan standard,” named for Justice Elena Kagan, a President Barack Obama nominee who served in the White House under President Bill Clinton. During Kagan’s Supreme Court confirmation process in 2010, Obama White House counsel Robert Bauer took the proactive step of asking the National Archives and Records Administration to release more than 170,000 documents related to her service, including emails.

Schumer has said a review of Kavanaugh’s voluminous paper trail, which could amount to more than a million pages, is the best way of understanding his views.

“It is no less than the standard my Republican colleagues demanded of Justice Kagan during her confirmation process,” Schumer said in a July 10 floor speech. “They asked for her entire records, a hundred-seventy-thousand documents were sent here. We need those documents, now more than ever because this new justice will be so pivotal in determining the future of our nation for so long.”

Republicans have labeled the so-called Kagan standard a stalling tactic and note that Senate Republicans, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, met with Kagan on May 12, 2010, just two days after her nomination. That was three days before Bauer’s request to the archives and six days before the Senate sent its first document request to the Clinton Presidential Library.

“This is my sixth Supreme Court debate and I’ve never heard of such a thing,” McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said. “Schumer has already announced that he’s going to do everything he can to stop his nomination, so I take him at his word. This is a manifestation of that.”

Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa also called out Democrats on the Senate floor Thursday.

“The American people elected senators to represent them, not the minority leader,” Grassley said. “When Senate Democrats have largely already made up their minds to vote against Judge Kavanaugh—and none of them have even met with him—their demands for an unprecedented paper chase sound more and more like a demand for a taxpayer-funded fishing expedition.”

The paper trail debate is more than political sparring. If Democrats can make the case that Republicans aren’t coming clean with a full document release, it could give swing-state senators cover to vote against the nominee.

“It’s incumbent on the senate as a whole to review all of the documents related to Judge Kavanaugh’s actions at the White House,” said Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, which is fighting his confirmation. “The burden is on Brett Kavanaugh and the White House to demonstrate, through a full presentation of his entire record, that he’s the right person for the job.”