Senate Republicans are hoping for a quieter confirmation hearing on Wednesday after protesters on Tuesday disrupted day one of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing.
A weary Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, told lawmakers that his committee would not delay a vote on Kavanaugh, after eight hours of shouting from protesters and interruptions from Democrats trying to stall. It will vote on Kavanaugh the week of Sept. 13, he said.
Grassley said he expects Wednesday’s hearing to focus on Kavanaugh’s time as a federal judge and his qualifications to serve on the Supreme Court.
“It’s pretty clear that nobody has found any qualification problems with this particular nominee,” Grassley said after the hearing. “It’s all been on process.”
The confirmation hearing will continue this week, beginning Wednesday, when Grassley will gavel in day two of the hearing at 9:30 a.m. and will begin the first round of questions, allotting 30 minutes for each senator, he said.
Sen. Tom Tillis, R-N.C., a member of the Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday’s hearing will move away from the spectacle of protesters and interruptions from Democrats and instead focus on the nominee’s 12 years as a federal judge, the 307 opinions he has written “and the legal mind that is Judge Kavanaugh.”
Kavanaugh sat silently most of the day, delivering an opening statement late in the afternoon before Grassley gaveled the first day to a close.
Capitol Police Tuesday arrested 61 people for disrupting the hearing and charged them with disorderly conduct, a spokeswoman said.
Democrats on the panel also moved to stop the process by calling for a postponement. They said the GOP is rushing the confirmation of Kavanaugh and they are demanding Kavanaugh’s paper trail from his years serving as staff secretary for President George W. Bush.
Democrats complained about a late-night document delivery of more than 42,000 pages relating to Kavanaugh over the weekend and said they needed more time to read the material.
And without the missing Bush-era documents, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Republicans are turning the hearing into a “charade and a mockery of our norms.”
Grassley said he will not ask for the Bush records because they are not pertinent to Kavanaugh’s qualifications to serve on the high court.
Grassley wasn’t able to utter a full sentence at the start of the hearing before Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., a potential 2020 presidential candidate and confirmed Kavanaugh “no” vote, called for a postponement.
At one point, Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, who is a member of the panel, said the hearing was being run “according to mob rule.”
Grassley plowed ahead, Tillis said later, and was “patient almost to a fault.”
