Can Senate confirm Kavanaugh before November election? Review will last through October

Erin Kelly | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Kavanaugh on Supreme Court could spell end of Roe v. Wade Brett Kavanaugh’s seat on the Supreme Court could mean abortion opponents are closer than they’ve been in 45 years to overturning _Roe v. Wade.

WASHINGTON – The National Archives told senators Thursday that it will take until late October to complete its review of Brett Kavanaugh's records, raising questions about whether the Senate will be able to confirm Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court before the Nov. 6 election.

However, Republicans said they still believe they can confirm Kavanaugh by Oct. 1, when the Supreme Court returns from its summer recess and begins hearing cases again. Justice Anthony Kennedy retired earlier this week, leaving the court with a vacancy.

George Hartmann, a spokesman for Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, said the committee expects to receive Kavanaugh's documents much more quickly from former President George W. Bush's team of lawyers. Kavanaugh served in the White House Counsel's Office while Bush was president, and Bush can release those documents while the National Archives staff is still reviewing them.

The committee received a little more than 125,000 pages of documents directly from Bush's attorneys on Thursday, Hartmann said.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, said Thursday that he objects to Republicans relying on Bush's attorneys to give them the documents before they have been reviewed by the National Archives.



"If Senate Republicans sideline this nonpartisan process and instead rely on self-selected partisan lawyers to self-select documents from just two of Judge Kavanaugh’s five years in the White House, it will mark the most partisan and incomplete vetting of a Supreme Court nominee in my memory," Leahy said. "And I have been here for 19 of them."

Grassley, R-Iowa, told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday that Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing would happen in September, followed by a vote on the Senate floor by Oct. 1.

More: What's next for the Supreme Court?

More: Senate digs through 1 million pages of documents

But Gary Stern, general counsel for the National Archives, sent a letter to Grassley on Thursday informing him that the archives and the George W. Bush Library in Texas will not complete their review of the records that Grassley requested by the Aug. 15 deadline the senator set.

Instead, Stern estimated that the archives – which includes the Bush library — will complete its mandatory review of roughly 300,000 pages of Kavanaugh's records from the White House Counsel's Office by about Aug. 20. The review of the remaining 600,000 pages of Kavanaugh's records will not be completed until the end of October, Stern wrote.

Grassley had said that it would take about 65 to 80 days from the date of Kavanaugh's nomination to a confirmation vote by the Senate. President Donald Trump nominated Kavanaugh on July 9 to replace Kennedy.

Democrats are angry that Grassley did not request documents from Kavanaugh's three years as staff secretary for Bush, from 2003-06. They say those records could hold key information about Kavanaugh's views on the now-banned CIA torture program and on government surveillance.

Republicans say that Democrats are just trying to stall the process for political reasons. Democrats are hoping to win control of the Senate in November – although most political analysts say that's a long-shot. Delaying the vote until after the election also could take some pressure off vulnerable Democrats from swing states who risk alienating voters whether they support or oppose Kavanaugh.

The volume of Kavanaugh's records — more than 1 million documents — dwarfs those of the past two Supreme Court justices to be confirmed: Neil Gorsuch and Elena Kagan. Senators reviewed about 182,000 pages of documents on Gorsuch and about 170,000 pages on Kagan.

Kavanaugh's documents include 307 opinions he wrote in his past 12 years as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, 6,168 pages of responses he submitted to a Judiciary Committee questionnaire, and hundreds of thousands of pages from his time working in the White House Counsel's Office and the Office of the Independent Counsel.

Kavanaugh was an associate independent counsel for Ken Starr, whose investigation of Bill and Hillary Clinton's financial dealings uncovered the Monica Lewinsky scandal that led to Bill Clinton's impeachment by the House in 1998. Clinton was acquitted by the Senate.