White House counsel huddles with Senate Republicans on dispute over documents from Supreme Court nominee
By Seung Min Kim
July 24 at 8:54 PM
White House counsel Donald McGahn met privately with key Senate Republicans on Tuesday to discuss how many of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s documents should be publicly released — a major point of contention in the confirmation process.
Democratic senators are demanding that Kavanaugh hand over any document he touched during his time at the George W. Bush White House, where he served in the counsel’s office and as staff secretary. That document production could top 1 million pages, and Republicans have deemed the Democrats’ demand a fishing expedition that will not be particularly revelatory.
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Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, confirmed the meeting with McGahn. Cornyn said the White House counsel visited with the panel’s Republicans to describe what a “reasonable, relevant document production would look like.”
Cornyn declined to describe directly what McGahn advised senators. But the influential No. 2 Republican said that documents from Kavanaugh’s time in the White House Counsel’s Office were “fair game” but that the paperwork from his service as staff secretary was not.
“The one that just seems to be a bridge too far that the Democrats never requested before his 2006 confirmation to the D.C. circuit are the staff secretary documents, which aren’t really his documents,” Cornyn said. “He was more or less a traffic cop.”
Another official briefed on the meeting said McGahn was asked by Senate Republicans what sections of Kavanaugh’s documents would be relevant for the Senate to review, and McGahn did not tell senators what they should do.
Based on the standard set during the confirmation process for Justice Elena Kagan, who served in the White House Counsel’s Office under President Bill Clinton, McGahn told senators that Kavanaugh’s documents from his time in the counsel’s office would, too, be relevant, according to the official.
more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/white-house-counsel-huddles-with-senate-republicans-on-dispute-over-documents-from-supreme-court-nominee/2018/07/24/f7e7ea0a-8f57-11e8-bcd5-9d911c784c38_story.html?utm_term=.c5b2cc9ef04e
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