Supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has generated a tremendous volume of documents over his time in federal government. The National Archives estimate that his three-year tenure as Bush staff secretary resulted in millions of pages requiring review. Then there’s the two years he spent in the White House Counsel’s Office. By contrast, Justice Elena Kagan’s papers totaled 170,000 pages; Chief Justice John Roberts, 70,000.
Documents released so far range from emails about whether Kavanaugh should distance himself from the ultra-conservative Federalist Society for optics’ sake to graphic questions he wanted to ask President Bill Clinton about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. (Kavanaugh only believes that Republican presidents should be immune from investigation and inquiry, apparently.)
Relatively few substantive records have surfaced. Those that have, however, prove the necessity of a full review of all records. Fix the Courts has pointed to emails suggesting Kavanaugh’s involvement with Bush-era warrantless wiretapping. Additional records could reveal a great deal about his position on key issues likely to come before the Supreme Court. The National Archives said that it can’t complete a review in full until late October. Republicans’ solution? An end run around the National Archives that will give them cover to push forward with a Sept. 4 hearing date for Kavanaugh.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) isn’t even requesting all relevant records. He claims documents from Kavanaugh’s time as staff secretary are “at the heart of executive privilege.” Read: Could expose Kavanaugh as indelibly partisan and ideologically extreme. Never mind that Kavanaugh himself cited the staff secretary position as “most interesting and formative.”
Democrats, led by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), have filed FOIA requests with four agencies—the Department of Justice, the CIA, and the Department of Homeland Security along with the National Archives—to try to get around the Republicans’ obstructionism. Schumer threatened to sue if their FOIA requests are not honored. Any lawsuit, however, would have to wait until Sept. 6, given the date on which the records were requested. Republicans are counting on that.
Republicans have created a completely unprecedented shadow confirmation process. They’ve tasked a partisan team of more than 50 lawyers—led by Bush lawyer Bill Burck—with reviewing the limited records they see fit to make public. To be clear, that’s the job of National Archives and George W. Bush Presidential Library staff. The National Archives, however, has only 30 staffers for the task and, unlike the Bush team, they’re going through Kavanaugh’s entire record.
Whatever Republicans come up with in time for September 4 will be incomplete—and politically tainted. Who knows what they’ll actually release or whether they’ll leave time for senators, much less the public, to review it? So far, Republicans have only produced 100,000 pages or so. That’s a fraction of the total estimated 3.8 million pages Kavanaugh’s generated or been privy to in government.