[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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