WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers’ paper chase for documents on President Trump’s Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh produced a nugget of strategy they may be gonna seize upon — although not likely enough to dam him.
Kavanaugh, as being a Bush administration associate White House counsel, sent an email offering to become listed on deliberations in regards to the post-Sept. 11 management of terror detainees — a worry Democrats have flagged like a confirmation flashpoint.
“I’m content to aid on this around the attorney-client issue, but you should obviously handle tribunals,” Kavanaugh replied to then-associate White House counsel Bradford Berenson. Berenson had asked Kavanaugh to support prepare then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to testify before Congress about detainees’ treatment, including “military tribunals, monitoring of atty/client conversations, racial profiling, etc.”
Earlier today, Sen. Dick Durbin said he believes Kavanaugh lied during his 2006 confirmation hearings for his post using a federal appellate court while he said he “isn’t involved and am not included in queries about the policies regarding detention of combatants.”
The email is probably the much more than 5,700 pages of documents released towards Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday and among in excess of 100,000 more pages of documents the National Archives is releasing on a rolling basis. Its unclear from your released documents whether or how Kavanaugh was involved in Ashcroft’s preparation, but Ashcroft took to guard the monitoring of terror suspects’ privileged conversations.
Democrats have ratcheted up efforts to acquire Kavanaugh documents, including filing a Freedom of Information Act request recently, a unique move.
The Senate’s top Democrats yesterday accused Republicans of stalling by building “layer after layer of unprecedented secrecy,” and allowing William Burck, a legal counsel and former Kavanaugh White House deputy, to handle the document release process.
“Don’t just is a massively conflicted Republican lawyer, who previously helped Judge Kavanaugh, cherry-picking what documents the Senate Judiciary Committee will see, he is now telling the Committee exactly what the entire Senate and also the American public will see — and Republicans are playing along,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said.
But Democrats’ attempts are unlikely to become fruitful, absent a fresh revelation on Kavanaugh’s view on a possible problem which could flip one Republican: abortion.
Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins said she wouldn’t support a candidate who expresses hostility for the court’s precedent in Roe v. Wade — something Kavanaugh is sensible enough to refrain from doing before he’s confirmed. Collins has additionally supported nearly every an example of Trump’s judicial nominees, including Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, meaning Democrats’ Hail Mary on Kavanaugh may crash.
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