Senate Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are unanimous in demanding all of the records from Brett Kavanaugh's service in the George W. Bush administration. The Trump nominee to the Supreme Court worked both as a legal adviser to Bush and as his staff secretary, and was present in the administration during the decision to lie to go to war in Iraq, illegally surveil Americans, torture war prisoners—every extra-legal decision Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made.
In their letter to the National Archives, Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats Patrick Leahy, Dianne Feinstein, Dick Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse, Chris Coons, Richard Blumenthal, Mazie Hirono, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, and Kamala Harris asked for documents and emails pertaining to Kavanaugh's White House positions as well as his nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Kavanaugh was serving as staff secretary in 2006 when Bush nominated him to the D.C. Circuit. In a tweet, Leahy wrote "Transparency must not depend on who’s in power. We cannot have a lower standard for Trump nominees than what BOTH Republicans and Democrats demanded from nominees of both parties in the past. We must never rubberstamp a nominee to our nation’s highest court."
Republicans are fighting against that transparency, trying to keep that all away from the public eye. And Maine Sen. Susan Collins is right there with her party.
She's making a half-hearted attempt at pretending that she's carefully considering this nomination. But her actions and her response to the issues of transparency—and her goddamned constitutional duty when confirming someone to the highest court in the land for the next 30 or 40 years—say otherwise.
The people of Maine need to call her on it. Directly. Every day. At her office numbers: (207) 622-8414, (207) 945-0417, (207) 283-1101, (207) 493-7873, (207) 784-6969, (207) 780-3575, (202) 224-2523. And in person this weekend, while she's back home.
Do you live in Maine? You have a powerful voice in stopping Trump's Supreme Court nominee. Click here to write Sen. Collins.