WASHINGTON — Confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh will begin the day after Labor Day, Republicans said, sparking Democratic objections that they are rushing the process without properly delving into his background.
The announcement Friday came amid the release of new documents from Kavanaugh’s time on the Kenneth Starr team investigating Bill Clinton. The records reveal his resistance to issuing an indictment of a sitting president.
On Christmas Eve 1998, Kavanaugh drafted an “Overall Plan” to colleagues providing his thoughts on bringing the independent counsel office’s work to a close and suggesting they inform the attorney general that the findings against Clinton be left to the next president.
“We believe an indictment should not be pursued while the President is in Office,” Kavanaugh wrote.
The memo, tucked toward the end of nearly 10,000 pages, provides greater insight into Kavanaugh’s views on executive power that are expected to feature prominently in the Senate confirmation hearings. Democrats have warned that Kavanaugh may be unwilling to protect special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
On Friday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he hopes to have President Donald Trump’s nominee confirmed to replace retired Justice Anthony Kennedy before the new court session begins Oct. 1.
“We’re moving right along,” McConnell said during a radio interview in Kentucky ahead of the announcement. “He’ll get confirmed. It won’t be a landslide, but he’ll get confirmed.”
The Judiciary Committee will hold up to four days of review, with Kavanaugh to begin facing questions on Day 2, Sept. 5, said committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley. Kavanaugh’s appearance will be followed by testimony from legal experts and people who know the judge.
The White House, which is determined to have Kavanaugh confirmed before the November elections as Republicans aim to deliver on Trump’s priorities, applauded the schedule announcement. But Democrats want access to more documents from Kavanaugh’s past as a judge and as an official in the George W. Bush administration.
Grassley, R-Iowa, said there’s “plenty of time” to review documents but now it’s time “to hear directly” from Kavanaugh.
“He’s a mainstream judge,” Grassley said. “He has a record of judicial independence and applying the law as it is written.”
So far, the committee has made public Kavanaugh’s 17,000-page questionnaire and his more than 300 court cases as an appellate judge. The panel has additionally received 174,000 pages from his work for Bush in the White House counsel’s office.
The new documents Friday provide a glimpse into Kavanaugh’s years on the Starr team shuttling back and forth to Little Rock for “investigative purposes.” He co-wrote a detailed, nearly 300-page memo on deputy White House counsel Vince Foster’s suicide.
Hundreds of pages in the Starr files are grand jury proceedings that are redacted. Meanwhile, most of the White House records related to Kavanaugh are being held on a “committee confidential” basis, with 5,700 pages from his White House years released this week to the public.
Democrats say the Republicans are relying on the cherry-picked files being released primarily by Bush’s lawyer, Bill Burck, who is compiling and vetting the documents, rather than the traditional process of the National Archives and Records Administration.
