Kavanaugh Exec Branch Records More than Doubles Volume for Prior Supreme Court Nominees

WASHINGTON – The Senate Judiciary Committee today received nearly 170,000 pages of records from Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s service as a White House lawyer as the committee continues to evaluate his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. This tranche of documents – by itself nearly equivalent to the volume of records received for Justice Kagan’s nomination – brings the total volume of Executive Branch materials received by the committee to more than 430,700 pages, more than doubling the previous record of 180,000 pages set during Justice Gorsuch’s nomination.

 

The materials were initially provided on a confidential basis in order to expedite the Senate Judiciary Committee’s access and review while the material is prepared for public release.

 

The committee requested records from Judge Kavanaugh’s service as an Executive Branch lawyer and records related to his nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Under the Presidential Records Act, the committee is entitled to Presidential records that the current and former Presidents determine are not privileged. President Bush is providing the committee with Presidential records that are not privileged. Records that Bush’s team believe are not Presidential records will be reviewed by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and provided to the committee if NARA determines them to be Presidential records under the PRA. More on the committee’s review process is available HERE.

 

The Chairman’s team has already reviewed all of the documents previously provided to the committee by President Bush and NARA. That’s in addition to reviewing other public material, including more than 10,000 pages of the judicial opinions that Judge Kavanaugh wrote or joined in his 12 years of service on the D.C. Circuit and more than 17,000 pages of material Judge Kavanaugh submitted to the committee in response to its bipartisan questionnaire.

 

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