Democrats on the U.S. Senate Judiciary committee have asked the National Archive for thousands of documents related to President Trump's nominee for the open spot on the Supreme Court.The request covers Brent Kavanaugh's time as Senior Associate Counsel to President George W. Bush and later as Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary.
At a press conference, North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis said he doesn't believe the documents were requested in good faith, as several Democrats have said they will oppose anyone President Trump nominates to the court.
“This documentation doesn't even include the some 300...307 opinions that Judge Kavanaugh has been engaged in and several other cases that he's joined,” said Tillis, a Republican. “Those are documents that, presumably, our colleagues have looked at, but they haven't found much in it to build a case against... the nominee. So now they've decided to take it down a different path which, I believe, is more of a stall tactic than anything else.”
Republicans have criticized this move as a scheme to delay confirmation until after the midterm elections in November. Still, several of Tillis's fellow Republicans believe Kavanaugh will be confirmed as the next justice.
At the news conference, Tillis joined fellow Republicans in front of a wall of empty cardboard boxes marked "Kavanaugh Files" to represent the many thousands of digital documents that will be sent to Democrats.
“I don't think that this process is about discovery, it's about delay,” Tillis said. “We're obviously producing documents. They'll have the tools to search them. They'll have the time to do it. They'll have thousands of documents they should be reviewing today.”
Tillis says the document release will offer enough information to demonstrate Kavanaugh's fitness for the bench, but he still expects Democrats to oppose him.