One aspect that’s oft forgotten about the rise of William Rehnquist, who endured two separate Supreme Court confirmation hearings, is that he broke the rules to reach the highest court in the land. As John Dean, Richard Nixon’s former White House counsel, and others would go on to document, the nation’s 16th chief justice got away with things that should’ve disqualified him had they come to light when the Senate vetted him — not once, but twice — before he occupied his place on the Supreme Court.
Unless something dramatic happens at this week’s Senate confirmation hearings, Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s choice to replace retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, is bound to repeat history. Not just because he and Rehnquist, whom he’s called his “judicial hero,” are cut from the same partisan mold — shapen in the ways of Republican politics and conservatives’ dogged pursuit of judicial supremacy. But also because there are millions of records from his time in the White House under George W. Bush that the Trump administration, a later presidency, is determined to keep a secret.
That’s not even counting records from Kavanaugh’s 35 months as staff secretary, a time the nominee himself has called “formative” for his views on law and policy. Kavanaugh’s handlers have determined those documents are categorically out of bounds.
Powerless to stop the hearings outright but keenly aware that there’s a lot at stake with the Kavanaugh nomination, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee seemed to have lost their patience. Merely seconds into the first day of hearings, just as committee chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa was getting started with preliminaries, it fell to Kamala Harris, the junior senator of California and the most-junior member of the committee, to set the tone with an extraordinary interruption. The hearings can’t continue with a complete record of the nominee, she pressed. “We have not been given an opportunity to have a meaningful hearing on this nominee,” she said. The body had just gotten a new document dump the night before, just hours before the hearing.
The proceedings never quite recovered after that. Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, New Jersey’s Cory Booker, Hawaii’s Mazie Hirono, and Rhode Island’s Sheldon Whitehouse all joined the protest. As tempers flared — and Grassley had no option but to unenthusiastically pound his gavel and let Democrats complain, derailing his schedule — Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal made and renewed a motion, under Senate rules, to adjourn the hearings until all the relevant records were received from the White House. At this, chaos erupted in the chamber as protesters cheered and stood to oppose Kavanaugh, then were arrested and hauled off the premises. More chaos in the chamber. Grassley never granted Blumenthal’s motion, who insisted he had the better reading of the rules.