Panel gets Kavanaugh files on hearing’s eve

Schumer seeks delay, says time needed to review 42,000 pages on court nominee

WASHINGTON — Just 13 hours before the start of hearings on Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, lawmakers on Monday night received more than 42,000 pages of documents from the nominee’s service in the White House under former President George W. Bush.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer issued a call to delay the proceedings, calling the document production process “absurd.”

“Not a single senator will be able to review these records before tomorrow,” Schumer, D-N.Y., tweeted Monday evening.

Taylor Foy, a spokesman for Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, responded Monday night that “our review team will be able to complete its examination of this latest batch in short order, before tomorrow’s hearing begins.”

The first hearing is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Eastern time today. Today’s hearing will feature only opening statements from senators and Kavanaugh, with questioning to begin Wednesday.

No information was released on the subject matter of the documents, and Bush’s lawyer asked that they be made available only to committee members and staff.

Kavanaugh, appointed to

the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by Bush, served the former president in the White House counsel’s office from 2001 to 2003 and as staff secretary from 2003 to 2006.

Lawyer William Burck said in a letter to Grassley that the 5,148 documents totaling 42,390 pages retrieved from the National Archives were to be treated as “Committee Confidential,” with access limited to Judiciary Committee members and staff and with no public availability, at least for the time being.

In the letter to Grassley, Burck said lawyers working on behalf of the former president would determine at a later date which of the documents are “appropriate for public release.”

The Bush legal team had already turned over about 415,000 pages to the committee, with about 147,000 of them withheld from public view. President Donald Trump has claimed executive privilege to prevent release of more than 101,921 pages of records from Kavanaugh’s tenure in the White House during the Bush administration.

The level of production of documents from Kavanaugh’s White House days, both in the counsel’s office and as Bush’s staff secretary, has been a central point of attack for Democrats. Demands for documents from his time as staff secretary have been rejected by Republicans.

Justice Elena Kagan was the most recent Supreme Court nominee to have served in a

White House. Christopher Kang, deputy counsel under President Barack Obama, said Obama did not invoke privilege on any documents involving her work.

“Republicans know this has been the least transparent SCOTUS process in history,” Schumer tweeted, “and the hearings should be delayed until we can fully review Judge Kavanaugh’s records.”

Foy countered that the volume of documents turned over to lawmakers dwarfs “the total Executive Branch material for the last five confirmed nominees combined.”

The hearings are expected to last four days, so staff and committee members will have more than a few hours to review the documents before any vote is taken.

Barring a major surprise, the hearings are expected to end with Kavanaugh winning approval from the committee. His nomination would then move to the Senate floor, where Republicans currently hold a 50-49 majority. One seat is vacant after the death of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

“I think the handwriting is on the wall,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who sits on the Judiciary Committee and is the majority whip. “I think [Kavanaugh] will be confirmed pretty handily.”

Information for this article was contributed by Fred Barbash and Seung Min Kim of The Washington Post; by David G. Savage, Jennifer Haberkorn and Sarah D. Wire of the Los Angeles Times; and by Sheryl Gay Stolberg of