During the third day of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Senator Cory Booker challenged his colleagues to try and expel him for breaking a rule that he opposes by releasing confidential emails.
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – Sen. Cory Booker challenged his colleagues to try to expel him for breaking rules he opposes Thursday after promising to release an email including comments by Judge Brett Kavanaugh about racial profiling that has been deemed confidential.
“I’m going to release the email about racial profiling,” Booker said at the start of the third day of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I understand the penalty comes with potential ousting from the Senate.”
Questioning Kavanaugh on Wednesday night, Booker quoted from a 2002 document that he said showed Kavanaugh as an aide to President George W. Bush entertaining the use of racial profiling to combat terrorism after 9/11.
Kavanaugh asked to see the email, but Booker said he wanted to focus on Kavanaugh’s views about profiling today, not then. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, then objected, saying Booker was citing an email that had been deemed confidential by the committee and it was unfair to question a witness about a document he could not see.
Booker said there was no reason for the email to be deemed confidential because it did not involve national security.
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The cache of emails released by Booker’s office includes several with the subject line “racial profiling” and many date to January 2002 as the Bush Administration struggled to define exactly how and who could be subjected to searches at airports in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.
At the time, Kavanaugh was part of the team of Bush lawyers working with the Justice Department on the legality of those searches. In some of the documents released by Booker, the lawyers are questioning whether they should create a “race-neutral system at all” or use race in some circumstances as a factor to decide who gets searched.
Kavanaugh writes in one email that he and others favor “effective security measures that are race neutral” but need to decide how to deal with such measures while searches are being conducted before comprehensive standards are determined.
As the committee resumed hearings on Thursday, Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said his staff had been working until 3 a.m. with the Justice Department to get documents senators wanted to use at the hearing cleared for public release.
He said he had urged senators to request documents in August to have time to go through the process.
Booker countered that the process Grassley was citing — of producing documents for the hearing — was a sham, and he would have his staff release the letter anyway, knowing it violated Senate rules.
“As I’ve been saying from the beginning, this process has been a sham,” Booker said in a statement released by his office as the hearing continued. “The fact that tens of thousands of documents revealing a Supreme Court nominee’s views on key issues were deemed committee confidential and not available to the public reflects the absurdity of this process. The public has a right to access documents about a Supreme Court nominee’s views on issues that are profoundly important, such as race and the law. This process has demonstrated an unprecedented level of secrecy and opaqueness that undermines the Senate’s constitutional duty to advice and consent.”
In response to Booker in the hearing, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said making the emails public was akin to a senator releasing classified information because the senator disagreed with the classification.
“No senator deserves to sit on this committee or in the Senate itself if they decide to be the law unto themselves,” Cornyn said. “Running for president is no excuse for violating the rules of the Senate.”
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Democrats on the committee then spoke out against the classification process. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill, urged fellow Democrats to join Booker.
“If there’s going to be some retribution against the senator from New Jersey, count me in,” Durbin said.
Booker later challenged Cornyn to seek to punish him.
“If he feels that I and now my fellow colleagues violated the rules, then bring the charges,” Booker said. “I’m ready to accept full responsibility for what I’ve done … and stand by public’s right to have access to this document.”
Sen. Cory Booker says Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh left the door “wide open” to overturning abortion during their meeting 8/23/18.
Herb Jackson, Washington Correspondent, @HerbNJDC
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