he was once an assistant to the nominee. i am told that he is not only attorney for george w. bush, but also for the white house counsel mr. mcgann, mr. reince priebus, the former chief of staff, and steve bannon, a man who i couldn t characterize in a few words. but he is his personal attorney. in this situation, he is now the litmus test. he is the filter to decide what the american people will see about this nominee. that is why we bring this issue before you. lest you think we are harping on a trifle, we are talking about whether the american people have the right to know. we now know that less than 10% of documents reflecting the public career of mr. kavanagh have been made available to this committee. i just want to say to my colleagues, particularly my colleague in new jersey, i completely agree with you. i concur with what you are doing, and let s jump into this
it is my understanding that by agreement with private lawyer bill burke, the chairman has designated 190,000 pages of kavanaugh s records committee confidential. by doing this, republicans argue members can t use these documents at the hearing or release them to the public. unlike the intelligence committee, and i have been a member for about two decades, the judiciary committee doesn t have any standing rules on how or when documents are designated committee confidential. previously, the judiciary committee has made material confidential only through bipartisan agreement. that has not been done in this case. so, this is without precedent. republicans claim that chairman lahey accept the documents on a committee confidential basis during the kagan administration.
called it a sham. was it a sham when we did it for gorsuch? was it a sham when senator lahey did it? the reason we did it is so that we could get documents so you could review them almost from, i think, august the fifth. maybe it was august the tenth. so you could start on that very early. don t forget, documents come committee confidential and then don t forget, on a regular rolling basis, they are not committee confidential, and then put on our website so that the 300 million people can view them if they want to. then the second point about the lawyer for president bush, all of our conversations last night or with the department of justice. i hope you understand that these people in the department of justice are people that are there for years under both republican and democrat
on their side. so, that makes you out to be not a pro plaintiff judge or pro-defendant judge. but to be a pro law judge. let me ask you about a few of your cases that i think demonstrate that you will vindicate the rights of those who are less powerful in our society. bill: we have been waiting for about an hour for the candidate to speak, they are. brett kavanaugh. as the protesters are heard in the background, we will see which way this goes. what you have been listening to for the past hours this whole argument over committee confidential. a series of documents that are given the committee that are not expected to be released to the public. cory booker is arguing that he will go ahead and release documents dating back to brett kavanaugh s time as president bush s lawyer in the white house. and risk being expelled from the senate. that s the back and forth right now, we have reached ten: 36 in the morning. steve squeeze has been standing by. he s been listening on.
documents were processed through the national archives, not private partisan lawyers and republicans agreed. 99% of kagan s white house records were publicly available and could be used freely by any member. by contrast, the committee has only 7% of brett kavanaugh s white house records. and only 4% of those are available to the public. no senate or committee rule grants the chairman unilateral authority to designate documents committee confidential. so i have no idea how that stamp committee confidential got on these documents. i sent a letter on august 10th, 2018, objecting to the blanket designation of documents as committee confidential.