Jerry Nadler makes new push for Kavanaugh’s White House records

By Kyle Cheney

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler is moving to bring new scrutiny to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s past, asking the National Archives on Tuesday to release a large cache of records related to his time in George W. Bush's White House.

In a letter from Nadler and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), another senior Judiciary Committee member, the lawmakers said accessing the records are essential to "the public's faith in the integrity of the judiciary."

The effort reopens a debate over Kavanaugh's nomination, which became the subject of fierce partisan rancor during his confirmation hearings last year after Kavanaugh faced allegations of sexual assault.

Democrats also argued they lacked access to records pertaining to Kavanaugh's government work that were important to his qualifications. Ultimately, the Senate supported his nomination along nearly partisan lines, but Democrats vowed to continue seeking records about his background.

Nadler and Johnson emphasized that the Senate only received a sliver of Kavanaugh's records from his White House tenure, which ran from 2001 to 2006, when he served in the White House counsel's office and later as staff secretary.

Then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley requested records from Kavanaugh's time in the counsel's office but later withdrew his request after the committee received some of the documents it sought.

But Nadler and Johnson say the likelihood that Kavanaugh will rule on matters like abortion rights, executive authority and other topics within the purview of the Judiciary Committee increases the urgency for them to obtain the full slate of records from his White House tenure — information they say is on track to be released in 2021 anyway under the Presidential Records Act.

In the interim, the committee members say the National Archives and Records Administration should begin producing documents that Grassley initially requested and then, on a "rolling basis," Kavanaugh's emails and any "textual records" in his office files from his time as staff secretary.

The top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee ripped Nadler's push as "harassment" of Kavanaugh.

“Chairman Nadler’s request is so far outside the scope of judicial ethics, it’s harassment,” said Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.). “Senate Democrats spent months launching false accusations in an attempt to smear Justice Kavanaugh’s reputation and block his confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court, and now House Democrats want to follow suit with yet another fishing expedition to tarnish his good name.”