wanted. in a speech mr. mcgahn discussed president trump s two lists of potential supreme court nominees, one he said was filled with mainstreamed candidates, the other list included candidates that are kind of too hot for primetime, the kind that really would be really hot in the senate, probably people who have written a lot, we really get a sense of their views, the kind of people that make people nervous. that s a quote. now what i m saying, this is the backdrop into which we come in to this situation. so, yes, there is frustration on this side. we know what happened with the prior nominee, the last one president obama presented to us. he never even got a meeting. he never got a hearing. he never got a vote and now the rush to judgment and the inability to really have a civil
was one and judge kavanaugh himself has acknowledged the importance of the time that he was white house staff secretary, so why mr. chairman you and the others on your side keep saying that this was kind of a nothing kind of a job, nothing could be further from the truth and this is why we are so adamant about requesting these documents that the judge himself, the nominee himself, has said were among the most form atiff time of his adult life. thank you, mr. chairman. of course that s why we have this hearing. judge kavanaugh we don t have the documents. judge kavanaugh will have an opportunity to answer every question about his role in almost anything he s done in his lifetime, i assume. mr. chairman, may i be recognized, sir? will you be the last one? i can t speak for my colleagues, but a lot of people i have a lot of respect for on this committee especially some of the new folks, i just want to
during justice gorsuch s confirmation, you put a process in place that would allow my colleagues to obtain the public release of confidential documents for use during the hearing. all i ask was my colleagues to identify the documents they intended to use and i would work to get the department of justice and former president bush to agree to waive restrictions on the documents. senator feinstein secured the public release of 19 documents last year under this process and senator klobuchar secured the release of four documents this year. if my colleagues truly believed that other committee confidential documents should have been made public, they never told me about them and request the ones they wanted. instead of scaring the american people by suggesting that we re hiding some incriminating documents, they should ve made a request that i worked to get the committee confidential
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
most important principals behind the integrity of our system of justice is that we have due process and we have transparency. that is why we have public courtrooms, that is why we have requirements in courts of law in our country that there will be transparency, that both parties will be given all relevant information. we can argue then as to the weight of the documents and the significance, but not as to whether or not they re admissible. so i object, i ask that we renew and revisit senator blumenthal s motion to to suspend or my motion to postpone this hearing. thank you. okay. thank you mr. chairman? i appreciate the courtesy of the democrats for me to proceed. may i just have one last opportunity please go ahead. please go ahead. i appreciate your giving me