Democrats Open Contentious Hearings With Attack on ‘Partisan’ Kavanaugh
WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats tore into President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee on Tuesday, painting Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh as a narrow-minded partisan as the opening day of his confirmation hearings verged on pandemonium. Dozens of screaming protesters were hauled out of the hearing room in handcuffs.
The verbal brawl began moments after the hearings began. Democrats, furious at being denied access to records related to Judge Kavanaugh, immediately interrupted the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, demanding time to consider tens of thousands of pages of documents released late Monday — the night before the hearing.
Judge Kavanaugh, who finally had the microphone hours later, portrayed himself as an impartial jurist and affable family man.
“I am not a pro-plaintiff or pro-defendant judge,” Judge Kavanaugh told the committee. “I’m not a pro-prosecution or pro-defense judge. I am a pro-law judge.”
But the hearings were dominated by Democratic theatrics and crackling protests. For more than an hour at the outset, irate Democrats and a frustrated Mr. Grassley parried back and forth. Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, denounced the hearing as “a charade and a mockery” and repeatedly moved to adjourn, while Mr. Grassley ruled him out of order over and over again.
At one point, Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, accused Democrats of engaging in “mob rule.”
Protesters, most of them women, shouted down senators; by day’s end, Capitol Police said a total of 70 people had been arrested, including nine outside the room.
It was a chaotic start to what would ordinarily be a staid, albeit deeply consequential, process. And barring an astounding revelation, the path remains clear for Judge Kavanaugh’s ultimate confirmation — probably this month. If he is confirmed, he could shape American jurisprudence for decades to come, replacing the retired Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a critical swing vote on divisive matters like same-sex marriage and abortion, with an unabashed conservative.
The session, which mostly settled down by the afternoon, also gave Americans their first extended glimpse of Judge Kavanaugh, 53, who brought his family — his wife and two daughters, his parents, an aunt and uncle and some cousins — along with him. He talked about going to ball games with his father and coaching his daughter in basketball, drawing bipartisan smiles when he gave a shoutout to each member of the team.
But that was about the extent of the comity; just days after members of the Senate had gathered together in a bipartisan show of civility at the funeral of Senator John McCain, the crowded hearing room in the Hart Senate Office Building seethed with antipathy.
Some of it reflected lingering bitterness over the treatment of Judge Merrick B. Garland, whose nomination to the Supreme Court in 2016 by President Barack Obama was not even considered by Senate Republicans.
In his opening statement, Judge Kavanaugh made a point of praising his colleagues on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — and one in particular.
“I have served with 17 other judges, each of them a colleague and a friend, on a court now led by our superb chief judge, Merrick Garland,” Judge Kavanaugh said
While Republicans cited Judge Kavanaugh’s impressive résumé — Yale Law degree, Supreme Court clerkship — as a reason to confirm him, Democrats made clear that they are laying the groundwork to turn the nominee’s biography against him.
Before joining the federal appeals court, Judge Kavanaugh had a long history of Republican political activism. He worked on the team, led by Ken Starr, that investigated former President Bill Clinton. He was in Florida during the presidential recount of 2000, advising George W. Bush, the governor at the time. (He also once represented Mr. Bush’s brother Jeb.) Later, he joined the Bush White House.
“Judge Kavanaugh has been knee deep in partisan politics,” said Senator Mazie K. Hirono, Democrat of Hawaii.
Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, said the nominee had been involved in some of “of the most pitched and partisan battles of our lifetimes.” Addressing Judge Kavanaugh directly, Mr. Coons added that it was “critical that this committee and the American people fully examine your record to understand what kind of justice you would be.”
Democrats have been complaining for weeks that the document production process, supervised by a lawyer for former President Bush, is rigged. Only a small portion of documents relating to Judge Kavanaugh’s time in the White House Counsel’s Office have been made available to the committee — and many of those are being kept from the public.
And the committee has received no documents from Judge Kavanaugh’s time as staff secretary to Mr. Bush, a role that he has said was “the most interesting and informative for me,” as preparations for his work as a judge.
Republicans countered that Democrats were harping on access to documents because they could not quibble with Judge Kavanaugh’s qualifications. And they took digs at their Democratic colleagues on the judiciary panel, several of whom — Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala D. Harris of California — are weighing presidential runs.
“This is not about documents,” said Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas. “It’s not about qualification. It’s not about record. What it is about is politics. It is about Democratic senators trying to re-litigate the 2016 election, and, just as importantly, working to begin litigating the 2020 presidential election.”
Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, said that Judge Kavanaugh’s still-hidden White House records could be particularly illuminating on a question of pressing urgency: understanding his views on the scope of executive power — in particular, whether sitting presidents should be immune from the legal process, like subpoenas to testify in a criminal investigation.
As a lawyer working for Mr. Starr, Judge Kavanaugh urged his superiors to question Mr. Clinton in graphic detail. But his views on the topic have evolved considerably since then. In a speech he made at a law school after serving in the Bush White House and then becoming a judge, he said that the distraction of preparing for questions by criminal investigators would make a president do a worse job, so presidents should be excused from that burden until after they leave office.
Democrats insinuated that Mr. Trump nominated Judge Kavanaugh because he believed the judge would protect him from the investigation being conducted by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel.
“You’ve taken the unorthodox position that presidents should not be burdened with a criminal or civil investigation while in office,” Mr. Leahy said. “Now we have a president who has declared in the last 24 hours that the Department of Justice shouldn’t prosecute Republicans,” Mr. Leahy said. “Now, it’s — it’s Alice in Wonderland. And I find it difficult to imagine that your views on this subject escape the attention of President Trump, who seems increasingly fixated on his own ballooning legal jeopardy.”
Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, picked up that line of attack, focusing on what he said were convenient inconsistencies in Judge Kavanaugh’s views on whether sitting presidents could be questioned in criminal investigations.
“This is a president who’s shown us consistently that he’s contemptuous of the rule of law,” Mr. Durbin said. “It’s that president who’s decided you are his man.”
“So are people nervous about this?” Mr. Durbin continued. “Are they concerned about it? Of course they are.”
Many of those who are nervous were seated in the audience, including Linda Sarsour, a founder of the Women’s March, who was one of the first in line to attend the hearing — and one of the first to be arrested. Also in the room was Fred Guttenberg, the father of Jaime Guttenberg, a 14-year-old girl killed in the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., who created a buzz on Twitter when he said that Judge Kavanaugh had rebuffed his effort to shake the nominee’s hand.
Tuesday’s hearings consisted of only opening statements. When questioning begins on Wednesday, Judge Kavanaugh is sure to face a detailed examination of his views on abortion.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrats of California, expressed concern that Judge Kavanaugh would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion. She cited a dissent last year in which Judge Kavanaugh said he would have delayed an abortion sought by an undocumented teenager in government custody.
Judge Kavanaugh said that allowing an undocumented teenager in federal custody to obtain an abortion was “based on a constitutional principle as novel as it is wrong: a new right for unlawful immigrant minors in U.S. government detention to obtain immediate abortion on demand.” He said he would have given the government more time to find a sponsor for the teenager.
In his opening statement, Judge Kavanaugh said he would model himself on Justice Kennedy, for whom he once served as a law clerk. In the process, Judge Kavanaugh sought to assure the committee that he would be “a neutral and impartial arbiter who favors no litigant or policy.”
“As Justice Kennedy showed us, a judge must be independent, not swayed by public pressure,” Judge Kavanaugh said. “Our independent judiciary is the crown jewel of our constitutional republic. In our independent judiciary, the Supreme Court is the last line of defense for the separation of powers, and the rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.”