As Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee face growing calls to bypass the GOP’s attempted cover-up and release all 200,000 pages of the so-called “committee confidential” documents related to Trump Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh’s record, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) late Wednesday made public 50 more pages of material that add to the mountain of evidence suggesting Kavanaugh has committed perjury.
“These documents suggest Judge Kavanaugh misled the Senate Judiciary Committee during his prior testimony,” Booker said in a statement. “This a grave and worrisome prospect given the fact that Judge Kavanaugh is up for a lifetime appointment to our nation’s highest court with the potential to change American law for decades to come.”
The 28 documents Booker released Wednesday night raise significant questions about Kavanaugh’s testimony during his 2006 confirmation hearings for his nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals.
According to Booker, the new documents provide “serious and concerning” evidence that Kavanaugh lied to the Senate when he claimed he was not involved with handling former President George W. Bush circuit court pick Charles Pickering, who had a record of hostility toward civil rights.
We have added 28 new Kavanaugh “committee confidential” documents to the others publicly last week. All docs available here: https://t.co/z6WObX83lc
— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) September 12, 2018
I will continue releasing so-called ‘committee confidential’ docs because it is important that American people see Kavanaugh’s entire record. No effort to intimidate me into silence will keep me from my moral & Constitutional duty. https://t.co/Yptiy4q0W4
— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) September 12, 2018
From the very beginning, Kavanaugh’s confirmation process has been denounced by Democrats and progressive groups as a “sham” orchestrated by Republicans to keep the public in the dark about crucial components of the judge’s extreme right-wing record and to hide substantial evidence that Kavanaugh’s previous testimony before the Senate does not hold up to close scrutiny.
While Senate Democrats have complained loudly about the GOP’s lack of transparency and selectively released dozens of pages of Kavanaugh documents marked “committee confidential,” political analyst Thomas Neuburger argued in a piece for Common Dreams on Thursday that Democrats must go further and release all of the documents in their possession.
“If they are truly serious about preventing Kavanaugh’s confirmation,” Neuburger declared, “Democrats will release all of this material en masse, and do it now.”
“Such a release will not only help to fully inform the public about this critical nomination, but it will also put Republicans under pressure, forcing them to be reactive for a change, not proactive, and leaving them no good choices,” Neuburger added. “If his nomination is not stopped, the nation could cross a constitutional line to a darkness it may never return from. If Democrats don’t put up the strongest possible resistance, using every weapon they have, an electoral darkness may descend on them as well, since they will be – and be seen to be – complicit in the damage to come.”
According to new reporting on Wednesday by The Intercept, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is also keeping a letter on Kavanaugh from her colleagues, but in a statement on Thursday, the senator said she is withholding the document at the request of its author.
Citing multiple anonymous sources, The Intercept‘s Ryan Grim reported that the letter “describes an incident involving Kavanaugh and a woman while they were in high school.”
“Kept hidden, the letter is beginning to take on a life of its own,” Grim notes. “Word began leaking out on the Hill about it, and Feinstein was approached by Democrats on the committee, but she rebuffed them, Democratic sources said…. The woman who is the subject of the letter is now being represented by Debra Katz, a whistleblower attorney who works with #MeToo survivors.”
COMMENTS