Chairman Grassley Responds to Democrats' Latest Stall Tactic on Kavanaugh

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley spoke on the Senate floor (video here) to call out the Democrats' latest tactic today on Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court:

Over the past day, several of my colleagues issued statements calling for Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing to be delayed. They claim it’s because President Trump’s former lawyer recently pleaded guilty to criminal violations of campaign finance law, allegedly at President Trump’s direction. 

I’m not going to delay Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing. There’s no precedent for delaying a hearing in these circumstances. In fact, there’s clear precedent pointing the other way. . . . President Clinton was under investigation for much of his presidency and was impeached for committing perjury. But the Senate didn’t stop confirming his lifetime appointments to the bench. President Trump is not even close to being in the same legal situation as President Clinton. My colleagues’ pleas to delay the hearing ring false. I’ll tell you why. . . . 

The goal has always been the same: delay the confirmation process as much as possible and hope Democrats take over the Senate in the midterm elections. The Ranking Member’s hometown newspaper reported on this strategy recently, calling it an attempt to stall. The strategies might change, but the goal to obstruct the confirmation process remains unchanged.

The Democrats have tried to use their unreasonable demands for huge numbers of largely irrelevant documents as an excuse to delay also: 

They tried pushing for an unprecedented disclosure of Judge Kavanaugh’s executive branch documents, even though we’ve already received more pages of such documents than any previous Supreme Court nominee. And this is on top of his twelve-year judicial track record and other more relevant publicly available materials. . . . 

On a related note, we are working to make as many of the documents we receive publicly available as soon as possible. It’s common practice to receive documents as “committee confidential” until we can assure ourselves that we won’t disclose sensitive, confidential information to the public. . . .  And, of course, all my Senate colleagues are welcome to review “committee confidential” documents at their convenience. Simply get in touch with my staff. They will make sure you have full access to the range of “committee confidential” documents.

And Chairman Grassley recently noted that, contrary to liberal and Democrat complaints about the hiding of records, the majority of the records related to Judge Kavanaugh's service in President George W. Bush's White House Counsel's office are restricted from public access under the Presidential Records Act and the Freedom of Information Act.  Both Presidents Bush and Trump are working to make as many documents available to the Judiciary Committee as possible, but instead of being praised for their transparency, they are being baselessly attacked.  As of yesterday, the Committee had received 430,700 pages of documents, dwarfing the previous record of 180,000 set by Justice Gorsuch.

Chairman Grassley also confirmed that the confirmation hearing for Judge Kavanaugh will start on September 4, allowing enough time for him to be confirmed before the start of the Supreme Court term this fall.  Thanks to Chairman Grassley for standing against all the Democrats' attack and delay tactics by consistently pointing to the facts.