[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 125 (Wednesday, July 25, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Page S5391]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     NOMINATION OF BRETT KAVANAUGH

  Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, the Senate has a constitutional duty equal 
to the President's to provide advice and consent on all judicial 
nominees, including the President's Supreme Court nominee, Brett 
Kavanaugh. Our advice-and-consent role requires us to view the totality 
of Judge Kavanaugh's record and experiences, including the documents 
from his time in the executive branch.
  Judge Kavanaugh worked as a fellow in the first Bush administration's 
Office of the Solicitor General, for Ken Starr in the Office of the 
Independent Counsel investigating President Clinton, and in President 
George W. Bush's White House in the office of White House Counsel and 
as Staff Secretary to the President.
  As has been the practice for previous Supreme Court nominees, the 
Judiciary Committee should ask for and receive all records related to 
his work in these roles. Any document requested of the Bush library or 
the National Archives should parallel similar requests made for other 
Supreme Court nominees.
  Take the request sent by the committee for Elena Kagan's nomination. 
This is the letter requesting information for Elena Kagan. We simply 
substituted Judge Kavanaugh's name where Elena Kagan's name appeared. 
You probably can't see it, but the request letter is signed by then-
chair of the Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy, and it was signed by 
our current Attorney General, but ranking member at that time, Jeff 
Sessions.
  On May 18, 2010, just 8 days after her nomination to the Supreme 
Court by President Obama, the Judiciary Committee sent a bipartisan 
request to the Director of the Clinton Presidential Library asking for 
records from her time working at the White House and records related to 
her nomination to the DC Circuit. We should send a similar request for 
Judge Kavanaugh, just substituting Brett Kavanaugh's name for Elena 
Kagan's. However, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, our 
colleague from Iowa, is refusing to work with us to request the 
totality of Judge Kavanaugh's record.
  I have heard the objection to the request for all the records that 
rests on the volume of documents we might receive. The fact that there 
could be a lot of documents relevant to Judge Kavanaugh's time in the 
White House, or any relevant point in his career, is not the issue. The 
President knew there were a lot of documents related to Judge 
Kavanaugh. It was reported that the majority leader argued that Judge 
Kavanaugh's voluminous record could hurt his confirmation, tacitly 
acknowledging that the Senate would have to examine all of the 
documents.
  Senator McConnell understood that the record was relevant to the 
Senate's advice-and-consent responsibility in reviewing this nominee's 
qualifications and judicial philosophy. Even the nominee himself, Judge 
Kavanaugh, thinks the same. Judge Kavanaugh often refers to how his 
executive branch experience shapes his judicial philosophy.
  In 2013, he wrote in a published law review article:

       When people ask me which prior legal experience has been 
     most useful for me as a judge, I tell them I certainly draw 
     on all of them, the clerkships, private practice at Kirkland, 
     Independent Counsel's office, even college jobs on the Hill 
     at Ways and Means, but the five-and-a-half years in the White 
     House, especially the three years as Staff Secretary for 
     President Bush, are among the most interesting and most 
     instructive. . . .

  In 2016, he repeated that sentiment almost word for word. Again, 
quoting Judge Kavanaugh:

       People sometimes ask what prior legal experience has been 
     most useful for me as a judge. And I say, ``I certainly draw 
     on all of them,'' but I also say that my five-and-a-half 
     years at the White House and especially my three years as 
     staff secretary for President George W. Bush were the most 
     interesting and informative for me.

  Judge Kavanaugh emphasized that the most interesting and informative 
experiences he had were at the White House as Staff Secretary. So, of 
course, the Senate Judiciary Committee ought to be able to review all 
of the records of his time in the White House.
  The scope of the request that Democrats on the Judiciary Committee 
are proposing is so obvious and common sense that it is hard to believe 
it is a topic of debate. In normal times, there would not be any 
question about what the committee is entitled to see, and no 
responsible Senate would object.
  But these are not normal times. In these times, we have Senators 
trying to cover for an irresponsible, dangerous President, who, like in 
anything else he does, wants to bulldoze his nominee's way onto the 
highest Court in the land for life.
  In these not-normal times, the simplest of processes--getting access 
to the records of a Supreme Court nominee--has become politicalized, 
and in these not-normal times, we have to wonder why the standards have 
suddenly changed, and we have to ask ourselves what could possibly be 
hiding in those documents.
  When the President proposes a nominee to the Supreme Court, we owe it 
to ourselves and to our country to thoroughly examine that nominee's 
record, to diligently question them about their records and judicial 
philosophy, and to make a reasoned judgment about their fitness for the 
job.
  The American people rely on us in the Senate, and particularly in the 
Judiciary Committee, to perform our constitutional advice-and-consent 
duties to the best of our abilities.
  So I urge my Republican colleagues to join us in calling for the full 
release of all documents related to Judge Kavanaugh's record and 
experiences. This has happened in the past. It has always happened, and 
it should happen again.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________