the presentation of something that s never been apart of a supreme court hearing in the past. mr. chairman who wanted mr. chairman? yes. i think i ll go back and forth. mr. chairman, i m confused because i heard earlier that this was a reaction to the document releases last night but i m reviewing a tweet from nbc that said democrats plotted coordinated protest strategy over the holiday weekend, all agreed to disrupt and protest the hearing sources tell me and subsequent dem leader led chuck schumer led a phone call and committee members are executing now. i just want to be clear, none of the members on this committee participated in that phone call or that strategy before the documents were released yesterday? are you suggesting that this allegation is false? mr. chairman, may i respond. this is outrageous. mr. chairman, there was a phone conference yesterday and i can tell you at the time of the phone conference many issues were raised, one of the issues
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
and i m not prepared to answer that question because i don t know what the answer has been and i don t want you to give me what you think the answer has been of discussion between our staff on that subject. mr. chairman, i don t think its ever been the case in a hearing like this that the members of this committee have to preclear what we propose to query the nominee about. i think that is totally unprecedented. mr. chairman f we don t even know what the rules are i d like to respond to senator hirono. the reason why we re having that discussion is, at least in my time on this committee and for 15 nominations we ve never had a request for a video. so it seems to me to be courteous to all the members of the committee it would be nice to know the purpose and what it might contain. any questions you want to ask, you can ask questions. it isn t about what questions you were going to ask, its about
people. but i don t think we should have to listen to the same thing three or four times. patience is good, mr. chairman. but i just want to understand the rules, if i wanted to you should be recognized. you can understand that i have been patient and listened to people not be recognized and speak any way because i would like to have this be a peaceful session. well, before i try your patience, i m done. mr. chairman, i have a question about ground rules. go ahead. the question is, before we can proceed, i d like to know whether the majority is still requiring of all of the democratic members of this committee to preclear the questions, documents and videos that we would like to use at this hearing? if the if the i was hoping that on the subject that you just brought up that we would have some clarification of what you want to approach that
liberty, the framers designed a government of three coequal branches strictly separating legislative, executive and judicial powers. the framers intended for the judiciary to be immuned from the political pressures the other two face, that is so that judges would decide cases according to the law and not according to popular opinion. now, 230 years after ratification, our legal system is the envy of the world. it provides our people s stability, predictability, protection of our rights and equal access to justice, but this is only possible when judges are committed to the rule of law.