While working in former President George W. Bush’s White House, current Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh told a colleague that he believed campaign contribution limits “have some constitutional problems,” CNN reported Saturday.
Though much of the United States’ campaign finance laws and regulations have been undone in recent years, limits on direct contributions to campaigns and campaign committees — currently $2,700 per person per election — are still the law. Various limits govern donations between PACs and state and local committees, as well.
“I have heard very few people say that the limits on contributions to candidates are unconstitutional, although I for one tend to think those limits have some constitutional problems,” Kavanaugh wrote to his Bush White House colleague Helgard Walker in a March 6, 2002, email, CNN reported.
Despite Democrats’ complaints that Republicans have failed to request Kavanaugh’s documents from his time as White House staff secretary during the Bush years, the nominee’s first hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee is set for Tuesday.
The Trump administration cited executive privilege in withholding 100,000 Kavanaugh documents from the public on Friday; Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called it a “Friday night document massacre.”
Kavanaugh’s campaign finance email was one of the documents released publicly Friday. It was previously known to Judiciary Committee members, but was marked “Committee Confidential,” CNN noted. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) successfully requested that committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) release the document, CNN reported citing a release from the Judiciary Committee.
“I think that you could ask some very interesting questions about these documents that I’m unable to even say,” Klobuchar said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, referring to the documents that remain confidential.
