Senate Democrats seek delay in Kavanaugh hearings
Senate Democrats Wednesday called for delaying confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in the wake of a guilty plea by Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, on campaignfinance counts that involve the president.
Democrats, who have been seeking leverage to slow down Kavanaugh’s consideration, argued that a new justice could be forced to decide questions directly relating to Trump, including whether he must comply with a subpoena from prosecutors and whether he can be indicted while in office.
“It is unseemly for the president of the United States to be picking a Supreme Court justice who could soon be effectively a juror in a case involving the president himself,” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said during a floor speech. “The prospect of the president being implicated in some criminal case is no longer a hypothetical that can be dismissed.”
Schumer said he was asking Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, to delay confirmation hearings scheduled to start Sept. 4, a request Grassley dismissed a couple of hours through a spokesman.
White House spokesman
Raj Shah dismissed the request as a sign of Democratic desperation.
“Democrats pledged to block Judge Kavanaugh
with everything they had,” Shah said in a written statement. “Frankly, this latest attempt looks increasingly desperate.”
Sen. Orrin Hatch, RUtah, also said the call for a delay was misguided.
“No, that’s an important position, and he’s very qualified for it, and there’s no reason to hold that up,” Hatch said.
Other Democrats advanced similar arguments a day after Cohen entered a guilty plea in a Manhattan federal court on eight counts.
Two of those counts implicated Trump directly, with Cohen saying he arranged to pay off two women to keep their stories of alleged affairs with Trump from becoming public before Election Day, in coordination with the thencandidate.
Cohen’s guilty plea came on the same day that Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was convicted in a federal court in Alexandria, Va., on eight tax- and bank-fraud charges.
In the short term, at least one Democrat said she would cancel a planned one-on-one meeting with Kavanaugh.
“I will be canceling my appointment with Judge Kavanaugh, because I would choose not to extend a courtesy to a president who is an unindicted co-conspirator, extend the courtesy of meeting his nominee for the Supreme Court,” Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, said. “A judge who has been nominated because the president expects him to protect him.”