Washington, DC – Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released the following statement regarding the refusal by Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-IA) to request critical documents related to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s work as a senior advisor to President George W. Bush:
“The current occupant of the Oval Office is under investigation for obstruction of justice and may soon test the Supreme Court on questions of executive power—something Judge Kavanaugh happens to favor in the extreme. And Judge Kavanaugh testified to the Senate in 2006 he was never privy to early information on the Bush administration’s planning and perpetration of torture – that he only read about it in the newspaper. Later we learned he had indeed been apprised of the torture program, was involved in at least one heated meeting on the subject, and had been called on to give legal advice about how the Supreme Court might rule on detention questions.
“The blinking red question is, what are Republicans so scared of? What is so disqualifying in his record from the White House that they would accede to the administration’s wishes and ignore the precedent Republicans set in demanding exhaustive document productions by Obama nominees? Judge Kavanaugh said himself his time as President Bush’s Staff Secretary was ‘in many ways among the most instructive’ for his career as a judge. The Senate and the American people should have this information. Republicans ought to join us in demanding it.”
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