President Donald Trump has stepped in last minute to block the release of more than 100,000 pages of documents related to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s time in the White House under the Bush administration, according to the New York Times.
Citing executive privilege, the White House told Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) that the privileged documents outline internal deliberations of the Bush White House and “advice submitted directly to President Bush,” Bush’s lawyer, William Burck wrote in the letter obtained by the Times.
The documents also reportedly “reflect deliberations and candid advice concerning the selection and nomination of judicial candidates, the confidentiality of which is critical to any president’s ability to carry out this core constitutional executive function,” Burck said, according to the Times.
With Kavanaugh’s hearing set to commence on Tuesday, Democrats view the document block as an attempted “coverup,” with Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer calling the move unprecedented in a tweet on Saturday.
Republicans in the Senate and the President of the United States are colluding to keep Judge Kavanaugh’s records secret, and trying to hide their actions from the American people by doing it on the Friday night of a holiday weekend.
What are they trying so desperately to hide?
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) September 1, 2018
Democrats have been trying desperately for weeks to request a full scale review of documents related to Kavanaugh’s time working for the Bush administration, as just one battle front attempt to block his confirmation to the Supreme Court.
