Nominee’s paper trail might color confirmation
WASHINGTON — The paper chase is on.
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s opponents are digging through documents at President George W. Bush’s library in Texas and other repositories around the country looking for anything that could help derail his nomination.
The trail of documents is extensive as Kavanaugh spent five years in the Bush White House and 12 years as a federal judge. Kavanaugh supporters say they’d be shocked if anybody found anything that would taint a man they say has unquestioned integrity.
During his past 12 years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, he has written roughly 300 opinions and law review articles and has given speeches across the country.
Before that, he spent two years in the White House counsel’s office and three years as staff secretary where he had eyeballs on nearly everything Bush saw, signed and said. Tens of thousands of pages of documents crossed Kavanaugh’s desk and if lawmakers demand to see the bulk of them, the Senate confirmation process could be a drawn-out affair.
The archival staff at the Bush library in Dallas is working to provide access to open records related to Kavanaugh’s White House years. The National Archives says the documents are being compiled on one webpage as was done for the records of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, Trump’s first pick for the high court.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, which will vote on the nomination, has been in preliminary discussions with various places that maintain records from Kavanaugh’s public service.
The panel also has asked Kavanaugh to provide information about his work for Bus and for independent counsel Kenneth Star’s team, where Kavanaugh co-wrote the report that served as the basis for President Bill Clinton’s impeachment.
In questionnaires sent out last Friday, the committee also asked about his work on the Bush campaign effort to halt the recount of votes in Florida in the disputed 2000 election. After Trump nominated Neil M. Gorsuch for the Supreme Court, the executive branch released all the internal White House correspondence related to him. But Kavanaugh was so involved in the inner workings of the Bush White House, some of his correspondence might still be classified under provisions of the Presidential Records Act.
The paper chase began just hours after Trump announced his pick.
The next morning, American Bridge 21st Century, a political action committee funded by Democrats and that does opposition research, had someone at the Bush library waiting for it to open. The group also has filed dozens of Freedom of Information Act requests and dispatched dozens of people around the country to peruse Kavanaugh-related material.
Besides the Bush library, the group has people scouring files at sites in the nation’s capital, Yale University where Kavanaugh earned his law degree, the National Archives and the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum in Little Rock, Arkansas.
“We are searching through all of the publicly available information we can get our hands on because we hope to properly highlight the dangers of having Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court,” said Harrell Kirstein, communications director for the group.
Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan, who worked and traveled with Kavanaugh during the Bush presidency, said he’s not surprised liberal operatives are looking for derogatory information on Kavanaugh. But he said he would be surprised if anyone found something on Kavanaugh, who he says has “unquestioned integrity.”