Grassley Seeks Documents for Supreme Court Nomination

WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today requested special access to documents related to Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s legal work in the White House, as the committee evaluates his nomination to the Supreme Court. In a letter to National Archives staff at the George W. Bush Presidential Library, Grassley sought all emails sent to or from Judge Kavanaugh during his time in the White House Counsel’s Office, all paper files maintained by Judge Kavanaugh in that position and all documents relating to his nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Grassley also made the following statement:

“For nearly two weeks, I’ve attempted to seek a good-faith agreement from the Ranking Member to jointly request documents relating to Judge Kavanaugh’s legal work in the White House. For nearly two weeks, I’ve found myself either waiting for a response to my proposals or faced with unprecedented and unreasonable counter-proposals.

“Even when I suggested that we jointly request documents that both sides want while continuing to negotiate other categories, the Ranking Member declined. The Minority rejected out of hand multiple accommodations that I’d offered to assist in targeting material they believe is relevant. Instead, they demanded that we expand the request to require a search of every email from every one of the hundreds of White House staffers who served alongside Judge Kavanaugh for nearly six years, to find records that merely mention his name.

“So today, on behalf of the committee, I submitted a request for documents related to Judge Kavanaugh’s time in the White House Counsel’s Office. I expect the production to be the largest ever in the Senate’s consideration of a Supreme Court nominee. In the meantime, I’m eager to review Judge Kavanaugh’s 307 judicial opinions, the hundreds of other opinions that he joined and the 6,168 pages he already provided to us, which are publicly available right now and will provide the greatest insight into his fitness for the high court. As I have said repeatedly, I am not going to put the American taxpayers on the hook for the Senate Democrats’ fishing expedition.”

Text of Chairman Grassley’s letter to the archivists at the Bush Library follows:

More:

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/rep/releases/grassley-seeks-documents-for-supreme-court-nomination