Feinstein: Dems Are Staging a Silent Protest Over Kavanaugh Nomination

EXCERPT: 
FEINSTEIN: "Senator Klobuchar is a couple minutes away so we will begin. I know it’s hot for all of you in the sun and I see one particular sufferer over here, so we’d like to begin now. This morning the Senate is going to hold hearings on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. He’s being nominated to a seat that’s pivotal, that will be the deciding vote on some of the most important issues of our day. So the Democratic Caucus has gathered here today to essentially state a silent protest. We will attend the meetings, we will question assiduously, but we want to express our concerns. I’ve had nine Supreme Court hearings. Pat Leahy has had more than I, but I’ve never had a hearing like this where documents are so difficult to get. When Justice Scalia died, Republicans refused to even meet with President Obama’s nominee and they held the seat open for the entire year. Now with the Republican in the White House, they’ve changed their position. The majority rushed into the hearing  and refusing to even look at the nominee’s full record. 93 percent of the records from Kavanaugh’s tenure in the White House as counsel and staff secretary have not been provided to the Senate and 96 percent are hidden to the public. Now for the first time ever we’ve been told the White House is withholding over 100,000 pages from Kavanaugh’s tenure in the White House counsel’s office with no explanation of what the topics are and no formal claim of executive privilege. And last night and last night 42,000 documents were sent over. Obviously no one has been able to look at them yet. Judiciary Democrats are sending a letter to White House counsel demanding these documents be immediately turned over to the Senate. A copy of that letter is available to you and also a copy of a six page letter from Mr. Burke which was the pivotal point in pressing us to move. As you know executive privilege has never been invoked to block the release of presidential records to the Senate during a Supreme Court nomination. In fact, when Elena Kagan was nominated, President Obama announced he would not invoke executive privilege over any of her White House records. When John Roberts was nominated President Bush announced he would not invoke executive privilege over any of his White House records and when Justice Rehnquist was nominated the committee refused to go forward with hearings until the White House produced records over which it initially indicated it might claim privilege. By contrast, the Trump White House is withholding thousands of pages of Brett Kavanaugh’s record from Congress and admits it’s doing so without actually asserting a legal privilege."