[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 136 (Thursday, August 16, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5674-S5675]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     NOMINATION OF BRETT KAVANAUGH

  Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I rise to discuss the confirmation 
process for Judge Brett Kavanaugh. For the last few weeks, Democrats 
have complained endlessly about documents. First, they said there 
weren't enough documents. Then, when the Judiciary Committee released a 
recordbreaking number of documents, Democrats complained there wasn't 
enough time to review them all. They then complained that the documents 
were not public. When we made the documents public, the Democrats were 
disappointed to find they contained no smoking gun. There has been much 
ado about documents, but in the end it is much ado about nothing.
  One thing I have heard many of my colleagues say is, because we 
reviewed all of Justice Elena Kagan's records from her time in the 
executive branch, we must review every last scrap of paper that crossed 
Judge Kavanaugh's desk while he was in the executive branch. That just 
isn't so.
  When Justice Kagan was nominated, the Senate did not ask for, nor did 
it receive, all of her records from her time in the Obama 
administration. In fact, the Senate never requested, and the Obama 
administration never provided, any of Justice Kagan's records from her 
time as Solicitor General.

[[Page S5675]]

They certainly didn't ask for every document from the Solicitor 
General's Office that contained a mere reference to Justice Kagan ``by 
name, initials, or title.''
  Producing sensitive internal deliberations and other documents from 
the Solicitor General's Office would have been extraordinarily 
inappropriate and even damaging to the executive branch, which is 
exactly why the Senate did not ask for Justice Kagan's records. This 
decision was especially difficult because Justice Kagan had no judicial 
records to review.
  By contrast, we have over 12 years of Judge Kavanaugh's rulings on 
the DC Circuit. These rulings, which my Democratic colleagues are 
reluctant to even acknowledge, let alone talk about, are the most 
relevant documents for evaluating what type of Justice Judge Kavanaugh 
will be.
  Judge Kavanaugh's court decisions are highly relevant to 
understanding his legal reasoning. The same can't be said of his White 
House documents, which more accurately reflect the conveyor belt 
process for Presidential decision making.
  Those who argue they need every document that even mentions Judge 
Kavanaugh are only now realizing the absurdity of this argument. At 
this point, Democrats are simply stalling for time. They made no effort 
to make their proposals any less unreasonable, and Senator Grassley 
rightly rejected them.
  By now, Americans are starting to see through the ruse. The real 
objective of these ridiculous demands is to delay--delay Judge 
Kavanaugh's hearing to delay his inevitable confirmation.
  Last week, Senator Grassley announced that the hearing for Judge 
Kavanaugh would start on September 4. Immediately, Democrats insisted 
that the committee is rushing to hold Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation 
hearing, but the hearings for the last three nominees--Justices Sonia 
Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Neil Gorsuch--were all held 48 or 49 days 
after the President announced their nominations. By comparison, Judge 
Kavanaugh's hearing will start 57 days after his nomination was 
announced. Apparently, the Judiciary Committee is in such a rush that 
it has given Senators an extra week to review the nominee's record. The 
left is pushing a false narrative that Republicans are rushing to hold 
Judge Kavanaugh's hearing. Progressives are doing this in an attempt to 
muddy the waters. They are hoping people will focus on spurious process 
arguments rather than diving into Kavanaugh's judicial record, which is 
all but unassailable.
  Last week, a number of my colleagues tried to make hay out of the 
fact that the Judiciary Committee received some documents about Judge 
Kavanaugh on a confidential basis. These colleagues said it was a 
travesty that they were not being made public, but they knew then that 
these documents were being reviewed so important information like 
Social Security numbers and other similar personal information could be 
redacted and removed. In the meantime, the Senators and their staff 
were given access to the documents right away so they could review them 
for the upcoming hearing. In any event, the criticism that documents 
were being kept confidential was quickly blown apart.
  Chairman Grassley recently made public more than 103,000 pages of 
materials from Judge Kavanaugh's time in the executive branch, and more 
materials are on the way. Most laughable of all, some on the left are 
now claiming that because there is no smoking gun in the documents, 
surely the production process must be nefarious.
  Maybe the huge number of documents is just too boring for Judge 
Kavanaugh's opponents to sift through or maybe they have looked through 
the documents already and know the American people have nothing to 
complain about.
  Consider the damning evidence already uncovered in these documents: 
Judge Kavanaugh goes to church on Sunday morning. He appreciates pizza 
when he is working late. He thought the last play of the Redskins game 
was ``a total disgrace.'' If these mendacities aren't grounds for 
disqualification, then what is? What more do we have to learn about 
Judge Kavanaugh before we can see him for what he truly is: Joseph 
Stalin without the moustache or, as one of my colleagues so calmly put 
it, a man who will ``pave the path to tyranny.''
  If I could tell the American people one thing today, it would be 
this: Judge Kavanaugh may seem like the human incarnation of a vanilla 
ice cream cone, but he is actually something far more sinister. Judging 
by the rhetoric from the left, I am convinced that this minivan-driving 
carpool dad is actually the second coming of Genghis Khan. Now, I have 
no evidence for this assertion--not right now, anyway, but if Chairman 
Grassley will just give us a few more years to read over each and every 
one of Judge Kavanaugh's work emails and maybe even every handwritten 
note he passed in grade school, I am sure they will find something 
because there is no way Democrats are just making this stuff up. I hope 
this isn't too much to ask.
  Naturally, I am being facetious only to prove a point. We have more 
than we need to determine Judge Kavanaugh's fitness for the Supreme 
Court. Based on the number of documents alone, this will be the most 
thorough vetting of a Supreme Court nominee in our Nation's history. I 
have only been here for 42 years, but I can tell you this is the most 
thorough vetting of a Supreme Court nominee in our Nation's history.
  We should call this hubbub about documents for what it really is--a 
naked partisan ploy, a red herring meant to distract the American 
people from Judge Kavanaugh's indisputable credentials. Watching this 
confirmation unfold is like watching the tortured last moments of a 
blowout basketball game. Democrats are down 30 with 10 seconds left, 
but they keep fouling to stop the shot clock in an attempt to avoid 
their inevitable defeat. Enough already.
  It is time Democrats come home from their fishing trip. We could 
spend eons angling for scandal in the river of documents the Judiciary 
Committee provided us, but nothing will bite because there is nothing 
there. Democrats know this by now, and it is time they admit it to the 
American people. The longer they wait, the more desperate they look.
  To my progressive colleagues--and I have to laugh at the word 
``progressive.'' They are anything but progressive; they are 
regressive, but I will call them progressives today. To my progressive 
colleagues, I will say this: Let's not waste any more time. By now, it 
is evident to even the most committed partisans that Judge Kavanaugh is 
supremely qualified for the Supreme Court. So stop playing politics and 
join us in supporting his confirmation.

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