Citing Cohen plea, Dems seek Kavanaugh delay
Senate Democrats on 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 campaign-finance 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 within 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. The Committee has a hearing scheduled for September 4th, and Judge Kavanaugh will be there.”
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, 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.
In interviews, 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 then-candidate.
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 bankfraud charges — a development Schumer said “blackened an already dark cloud hanging over this administration.”
“It seems at the very minimum we should be withholding this decision on this Supreme Court nominee until the air is cleared,” said Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill.
Echoing many other Democrats, Durbin also called it “premature” to consider impeachment of Trump but stressed that it was important to let special counsel Robert Mueller continue his probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election and other issues stemming from that investigation.
Even before Tuesday’s events, Democrats had been skeptical of Kavanaugh’s views on whether sitting presidents can be the subject of criminal prosecutions. The legal developments have raised the stakes on that issue, senators said.
“We have a Supreme Court nominee who’s being pushed through ... that has said through his writings and his speeches that he does not believe the president should be subject to a criminal investigation,” said Cory Booker, D-N.J. “What I want right now when it comes to Kavanaugh is to wait for this Mueller probe to be done.”
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,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii. “A judge who has been nominated because the president expects him to protect him.”
During a television appearance Tuesday, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., also referred to Trump as an “unindicted co-conspirator.”
“I would suggest that an unindicted co-conspirator to a crime should not be in the business of having the ability to appoint someone to a lifetime position on the highest court in our land — a court which, invariably, would hear the matters that are the subject of this very discussion,” Harris said on MSNBC.
In a statement issued Tuesday, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani said there “is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the president in the government’s charges against Mr. Cohen,” and he questioned Cohen’s credibility.