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The Senate Democrats' fight to make Brett Kavanaugh's record in politics public has increased in urgency. Kavanaugh, Russian asset Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, worked for President George W. Bush as both is private secretary and in the Office of Legal Counsel, and Democrats want every document from his entire service revealed. But Republicans are battling just as hard to conceal the records from more than half of Kavanaugh's time in the Bush White House.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) met with White House counsel Tuesday night to strategize on how to cover up those records.
Republicans, including Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) emerged from the meeting saying that the demand for Kavanaugh's records as staff secretary is irrelevant. It's just a "bridge too far," says Cornyn about that request. "He was more or less a traffic cop," in that role. If the records are going to be so mundane and unimportant, then what could possibly be the harm in having them released? What would it hurt? What are Republicans so intent on hiding?
Their arguments are also contradicted by Kavanaugh himself, circa 2006 when he was coming up for confirmation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Kavanaugh then said that his time as staff secretary was particularly "instructive" in his role on the judiciary. "When people ask me which of my prior experiences has been most useful to me as a judge, I tell them that all of them have been useful, and I certainly draw on all of them," Kavanaugh said in materials then released to the committee. "But I also do not hesitate to say that my five and a half years in the White House—and especially my three years as Staff Secretary for President Bush—were the most interesting and in many ways among the most instructive."
Democratic leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) fired off a letter to Grassley Tuesday night reminding him of those words from Kavanaugh, and of Senate Republicans at the time. He points out that in 2006, "Sen. [Orrin] Hatch [R-UT] stated that then-nominee Kavanaugh's backgroud as Staff Secretary 'may prove to be particularly good judicial training.'" He adds that Cornyn "described the position of Staff Secretary as 'a job whose title belies the very serious and important responsibilities that that individual performs." And that Cornyn "reiterated that position two weeks ago when, in detailing Judge Kavanaugh's qualifications to be a Supreme Court Justice, he described the Staff Secretary position as 'a very, very important job.'" He also couldn't resist this reminder to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his words about one of the strangest Supreme Court nominees in recent history, when he "pointed to then-Supreme Court nominee [Harriet] Miers' time as Staff Secretary when detailing her fitness to serve on the Court."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the ranking Democrat on Judiciary, makes the direct point: "The American people deserve to know who is being nominated and what his record shows. […] They're the ones who will be affected for generations if he is confirmed. What are Republicans and the White House trying to hide?"
Maybe his strong convictions about the power of the president? The power that should never be ceded to such a deeply and completely corrupted president as Trump?