Democrats Release ‘Confidential’ Brett Kavanaugh Emails

BY SCOTT HORSLEY, NPR

Updated, Sept. 6, 1:12 p.m. ET

Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh is back at the witness table Thursday for a third day of confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

He was pressed once again for his views on presidential power.

WATCH LIVE: Brett Kavanaugh Confirmation Hearings

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Il., sought a promise from Kavanaugh that he’d be willing to serve as a check on the president who nominated him.

“Give us some reassurance about your commitment to the democratic institutions in this country, in the face of a president who seems prepared to cast them aside,” Durbin said. “Whether it’s voter suppression, the role of the media — case after case, we hear this president willing to walk away from the rule of law in this country.

“No one is above the law,” Kavanaugh replied. “I’ve made clear in my writings that a court order that requires a president to do something or prohibits a president from doing something under the constitution or laws of the United States is the final word in our system.”

Thursday’s session began with Democrats on the committee in open revolt over the handling of documents from Kavanaugh’s tenure in the George W. Bush White House.

Some documents have been withheld altogether. Others have been provided to the committee on “confidential” terms, meaning senators can see them but they can’t be made public.

Democrats object that the confidential label has been applied to a wide swath of records, many of which contain no personal or sensitive information. They also complain that classification decisions were made by former President Bush’s attorney, William Burck, a former deputy of Kavanaugh’s.

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., released some of the confidential documents in what he called an act of civil disobedience, even though he acknowledged such action carries a possible penalty of expulsion from the Senate.

Sens. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., also released “confidential” documents, drawing a stern rebuke from Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who called them “irresponsible and outrageous.”

“This is no different from the senator deciding to release classified information,” Cornyn said. “No senator deserves to sit on this committee, or serve in the Senate in my view, if they decide to be a law unto themselves and willingly flout the rules of the Senate and the determination of confidentiality and classification.”

Read the documents released by Sen. Hirono.

The documents released by Booker include a batch of emails concerning racial profiling, affirmative action and other race-conscious government programs.

In a 2002 email, Kavanaugh writes that security procedures adopted in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks should ultimately be race-neutral, though he acknowledged that developing such procedures could take time. Others in the White House suggested racial profiling might be legally justified if it enhanced security.

In a 2001 email, Kavanaugh addresses a legal challenge to an affirmative action program within the Department of Transportation.

“The fundamental problem in this case is that these DOT regulations use a lot of legalisms and disguises to mask what in reality is a naked racial set-aside,” he wrote.

WATCH LIVE: Brett Kavanaugh Confirmation Hearings

Kavanaugh had sidestepped questions from Booker on Wednesday night about the circumstances in which government can and cannot use race-conscious measures to address past discrimination.

He conceded that hopes he expressed nearly two decades ago for a color-blind society have not been fulfilled.

“We see on an all-too-common basis that racism still exists in the United States of America,” Kavanaugh said. “Our long march to racial equality is not over.”

Separately, The New York Times reported on leaked emails from the “confidential” file. One is an email drafted by Kavanaugh in 2003, in which he questioned whether the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion should be described as “settled law of the land.”

Pressed on that email by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., on Thursday, Kavanaugh explained he was simply summarizing views of legal scholars, not offering his own view.

On Wednesday, Kavanaugh said he understands the weight that many people attach to Roe. But he declined to say whether that case was properly decided.

While Kavanaugh said he would not have any trouble ruling against the president who nominated him to the high court, he declined to weigh in on President Trump’s recent tweets criticizing Attorney General Jeff Sessions for the prosecution of two GOP lawmakers.

“I don’t think we want judges commenting on the latest political controversy,” Kavanaugh said. “That would ultimately lead the people to doubt whether we’re independent, whether we’re politicians in robes.”

Kavanaugh is fielding a second, shorter round of questions from members of the committee Thursday. Barring surprises, he appears likely to win confirmation in time to take his place on the bench when the Supreme Court begins its fall term next month.