Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) on Wednesday forced Republicans to adjourn the Senate for the day to protest what he called the unfair withholding of documents related to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s record.
Schumer objected to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) request that the Judiciary Committee be allowed to continue its confirmation hearing beyond the two-hour limit set by the chamber’s rules.
Such requests are usually granted routinely, but Schumer balked as a protest of the number of documents that have yet to be shared with Senate Democrats.
{mosads}“Over 90 percent of Judge Kavanaugh’s record has not been received by the Senate and may never be. What has been delivered to the committee was prescreened by a Republican lawyer with no guidelines as to what we were receiving and what we weren’t,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
McConnell decided to adjourn the Senate for the day to get around Schumer’s objection.
Senate rules state that committees cannot hold hearings for more than two hours while the Senate is in session unless there is unanimous consent to proceed.
A spokesman for Schumer said “Republicans have made a mockery of this process by withholding millions of pages of documents from Judge Kavanaugh’s records.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) vowed to colleagues earlier in the day that the committee would complete the first round of questioning, in which each senator gets 30 minutes to grill the nominee, no matter what.
A GOP aide told reporters on Friday that if Democrats invoked the so-called two-hour rule that Republicans would simply adjourn the hearing and deprive Democrats of the chance to ask the nominee questions.
But McConnell decided Wednesday that having a full hearing for Kavanaugh was more important than pending floor business.
“Unfortunately some of the hijinks continue even on the Senate floor,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), in Kavanaugh’s hearing. “That’s unfortunate.”
Democrats on the Judiciary panel during the first two days of Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings have repeatedly objected to the number of records missing from their review of the nominee’s past work, pressing for a delay of the proceedings.
“Senators have had more than enough time … to adequately access Judge Kavanaugh’s qualifications,” Grassley said Tuesday.
Jordain Carney contributed.