As usual, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., is more bark than bite.
The senator has made a big show of questioning Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh about his views on racial profiling, especially as it relates to law enforcement and African-Americans. Booker has also questioned the judge about racial diversity and voter ID laws, characterizing the two as the “crown jewel” of the civil rights movement.
On Thursday, the New Jersey Democrat took it up a notch by releasing previously undisclosed emails written by Kavanaugh when he served as an aide to President George W. Bush, claiming the memos show the judge entertained the use of racial profiling to fight terrorism following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
But the emails don’t show Kavanaugh cheerleading racist tactics. Quite the opposite, actually. As usual, Booker’s sensational storytelling doesn’t match up to reality.
The lead up to the document dump began Thursday during the third day of Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
“You refused to answer a lot of my questions over the race and the law,” Booker said. “Your answers don’t provide me comfort.”
Booker quoted one of the previously unreleased White House emails. The senator then asked Kavanaugh during the confirmation hearing to respond to the 16-year-old letter. Kavanaugh said he’d need to see it before commenting, to which Booker claimed bitterly that the email can’t be shared because it has been marked “committee confidential.”
“The fact that we aren’t allowing these emails out … that’s why I say the system is rigged,” said the senator.
That’s about when Booker announced his supposedly big gambit: He would release the “committee confidential” emails pertaining to Kavanaugh and post-9/11 “racial profiling.”
“I am going to release the email about racial profiling. And I understand that the penalty comes with potential ousting from the Senate,” the senator said. “And if [Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas] believes that I violated Senate rules, I openly invite and accept the consequences…the emails being withheld from the public have nothing to do with national security.”
He added with his usual melodramatic flair, “This is about the closest I’ll probably ever have in my life to an ‘I am Spartacus’ moment.”
Brave. The only problem is that the emails Booker released are not nearly as sensational as advertised.
The emails don’t show that Kavanaugh promoted racist anti-terror policies. The memos show the judge opposed using race or national origin for both basic law enforcement and airport security screening following the 9/11 attacks. The second email released Thursday by Booker also shows Kavanaugh writing that he opposes suits against the government from discrimination that occurred privately. So there’s that.
Further, as Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey noted, the Kavanaugh memos “don’t have to do with ‘racial profiling’ in relation to law enforcement and African-Americans,” which sort of upends Booker’s whole performance.
What the memos do show is that Kavanuagh often discussed Office of Transportation Policy contracts struck after the Supreme Court’s 1995 Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña decision. Exciting stuff. The memos also show a lot of back-and-forth about “interim screening measures after 9/11 to combat al-Qaeda,” Morrissey notes. The emails are certainly interesting, but not the bombshells Booker promised they were.
