Report: Feinstein Blasts National Archives Amid Kavanaugh Documents Fight

From Politico:

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Friday requested Brett Kavanaugh’s records from his time as White House counsel without separate documents sought by Democrats, a sharply partisan turn in the escalating clash over vetting President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.
[Clip]
Hitting Democrats for an attempted “fishing expedition” on Kavanaugh, Grassley singled out his Democratic counterpart on the committee, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, for drawing a hard line in talks.
[Clip]
His letter came hours after Feinstein warned the National Archives against “a biased denial of document requests” in response to the nonpartisan agency’s statement that the GOP solely holds the rights to request Kavanaugh records.
After Feinstein raised questions last week about “a large team of outside private lawyers” reviewing documents from Kavanaugh’s five years in the George W. Bush White House for compliance with the Presidential Records Act, the Archives noted in its response that “exclusively” retains power to make document requests under the law.

Read the Complete Article
See Also: Top Senate Democrat Presses Former President George W. Bush For Kavanaugh Documents (via Washington Post)

In a letter released Friday, [Sen. Charles] Schumer [D-NY] wrote to [President George W.] Bush with a “time-sensitive” request: to make public all of Kavanaugh’s paperwork, including from his three years as Bush’s staff secretary, a period when Kavanaugh controlled all the documents that flowed to and from the Oval Office.
Schumer says Senate Republicans plan to ask for what Schumer called a “prescreened subset” of Kavanaugh’s White House counsel records that will be vetted by Bush’s legal team, which Schumer argued could exclude the National Archives from the screening process. Republicans dispute that the Archives will be excluded.

Read the Complete Article
See Also: Full Text of Letter From Sen. Schumer to President George W. Bush
2 pages; PDF. 

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, News