Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) accused Democrats of going on a “fishing trip” for scandals in President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s past.
“For the last few weeks, Democrats have complained endlessly about documents,” he said on the Senate floor Thursday. “First, they said there weren’t enough documents. Then when the Judiciary Committee released a record-breaking number of documents, Democrats complained that there wasn’t enough time to review them all. They then complained that the documents weren’t public. When we made the documents public, Democrats were disappointed to find that they contained no smoking gun.”
Senate Democrats are currently threatening to sue if their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for all documents related to Kavanaugh’s time in the George W. Bush White House is denied.
Hatch pointed out that “when Justice Kagan was nominated, the Senate did not ask for, nor did it receive, all of her records from her time in the Obama administration. In fact, the Senate never requested, and the Obama administration never provided, any of Justice Kagan’s records from her time as Solicitor General.”
“Judge Kavanaugh’s court decisions are highly relevant to understanding his legal reasoning,” he emphasized. “The same can’t be said of his White House documents, which more accurately reflect the conveyor-belt process for presidential decision-making.”
Hatch also emphasized the lack of a "smoking gun" in the documents that have been released so far.
"Consider the damning evidence already uncovered in these documents,” Hatch commented. “Judge Kavanaugh goes to church on Sunday morning, he appreciates pizza when he’s working late, he thought the last play of a Redskins game was ‘a total disgrace.’"
"What more do we have to learn about Judge Kavanaugh before we can see him for what he truly is: Joseph Stalin without the mustache or as one of my colleagues so calmly put it, a man who will ‘pave the pave to tyranny,’" Hatch continued, referencing a remark by Sen. Jeff Merkeley (D-OR).
Hatch went on to say that although Kavanaugh “may seem like the human incarnation of a vanilla ice cream cone,” he’s “actually something far more sinister."
"Judging by the rhetoric coming from the left, I’m convinced that this minivan-driving carpool dad is actually the second coming of Genghis Khan," he concluded sarcastically.
"It’s time Democrats come home from their fishing trip. We could spend eons angling for scandal in the river of documents the Judiciary Committee has provided us," Hatch argued. "But nothing will bite because there’s nothing there. Democrats know this by now, and it’s time they admit it to the American people. The longer they wait, the more desperate they look."
A confirmation hearing for Judge Kavanaugh is set for Sept. 4.