i ll defer to my colleagues but just as a point of information, we sent a letter to you, mr. chairman, seven days ago regarding the committee confidential nature of the documents and i ask that they would not be designated committee confidential. as another point of information, it is my understanding there are 6 million to 7 million pages with regard to this nominee. you ve only requested 10% to 15% of the total. i appreciate that there are a lot of pages of documents, but we have to have this conversation in the context of the total and the fact that we ve only been given, by your request, 10% to 15% of those documents and my final point is this, this is a hearing about who will sit on the highest court of our land. this is a hearing that is about who will sit in a house that symbolizes our system of justice in this country and some of the
that has not been the case here where 147,000 pages have been designated by bill bourke as outside the reach of the american people and the senate judiciary committee. that s a further example of why this whole process is gone astray and i think your explanation ignores that. mr. chairman? mr. chairman? who wants the floor? the new senator. go ahead. thank you, mr. chairman. mr. chairman, can you tell me again how many documents have been produced? 488,000 other than 28,000 pages that justice kavanaugh included his own opinions. are we in executive session? we re having the hearing of a nominee for the supreme court. yes, sir, i got that. we re not in executive
press and make whatever comments they want to the press and tell the world how they feel about this, but the fact is its hard to take it seriously when every single one of our colleagues in the senate judiciary committee on the democratic side have announced their opposition to this nominee even before today s hearing. so its hard to take seriously their claim that somehow they can t do their job because they ve been denied access to attorney client or executive privileged documents when they ve already made up their mind before the hearing. there s nothing fair about that and we would just ask for an opportunity for the american people to be able to listen to this nominee answer the questions that we have. i think that s how we ought to proceed and i hope we will. mr. chairman? mr. chairman, can i be recognized to respond specifically to that comment? there is precedent here. there are rules that can guide us. we re asking for those rules to be followed. in the past, our colleague
grassley that ran those hearings, i would like to run this hearing the same way of doing it. how long do you want to go on? mr. chairman, i d like to make one more point before we proceed if i might. the accusation that this was a mob rule hearing was made by your colleague. i think you have been conducting this in a respectful way. my concerns that i want to renew given the exchange you just had with senator leahy who has participated in more confirmation hearings than any other senator here, was how the documents was handled for justice kagen, a request was sent to the archives, ranking member feinstein tried to work with you to send one identical and before we proceed with the questioning, mr. chairman, i simply would like to have a settled heart about why you chose to communicate directly to the archives not to respond to the ranking member s request?
give me the courtesy of doing it. how long do you want to go on? mr. chairman, i would like to make one more point before we proceed if i might. the accusation that this is a mob rule hearing was made by your colleague from the state of texas. i think you have been conducting this in a respectful, appropriate, deliberate way. my concerns that i want to renew given the exchange you just had with senator leahy who has presided over more supreme court confirmations than any currently serving member i believe was over how the document request was handled for now justice kagan. a request was sent to the national archives. ranking member feinstein tried to work with you to find an identical request if the national archives. i would like to have a settled heart about why you chose to communicate directly to the archives, not to respond to the ranking member s request. members of this committee have raised issues about an