Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. BLUNT. I yield to the Senator.
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Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I want to talk a little bit about what my good friend from Delaware talked about with regard to our being judged by history. Some of what I want to talk about today is of the history of this system and of others who have served.
I have read several times in the last 30 days, particularly, that the Democrats feel they can do anything because of the way Merrick Garland was treated. I don't think there is any comparison between the way Merrick Garland was treated and the way Judge Kavanaugh has been treated. The only comparison I can think of is that they are both on the DC Court of Appeals and that they have both said very kind things about each other, but there is no comparison.
Merrick Garland was nominated in the last year of a Presidency. The last time someone was put on the Supreme Court who was nominated in the last year of a Presidency was in 1932. The last time that happened was in 1932. The last time someone went on the Supreme Court when the President was of one party and the Senate was of the other and when it was a Presidential election year was in 1888. There is no comparison.
In fact, Vice President Biden--then-Senator Biden--said on June 25 of 1992, in what turned out to be the last year of the Bush Presidency: If there is a vacancy, there will be no hearing until after the election.
There was not a vacancy, by the way. They were just putting that historical marker down that if there were a vacancy, there would not be a hearing until after the election. Of course, that meant there would not be a hearing that mattered. Unless the President were to be reelected and the majority in the Senate were to stay the same, there would be no reason to assume there would be a judge appointed by this President this year.
Senator Schumer said in July of 2007, in his not wanting to wait until election year but just wanting to put his position on the table even earlier in the last year of another Bush Presidency, that we should not confirm any Bush nominee--I think he meant--from that moment on. As a matter of fact, he did say we shouldn't confirm any Bush nominee from that moment on except in extraordinary circumstances. I am sure he didn't mean one vacancy on the Supreme Court would be an extraordinary circumstance but a circumstance that would be dealt with just like Judge Garland's was dealt with, and people were heard. Yet that is not what this is about, and it sets no precedent any more than Senator Biden or Senator Schumer set a precedent that should have been a surprise for anybody.
So what do we have with Judge Kavanaugh as we decide in the next few hours or in the next day or so whether he becomes Justice Kavanaugh?
This was the seventh background check of this judge by the FBI. There had never been a more extensive review of a Supreme Court nominee-- seven times in slightly more than a dozen years--in going through this background check.
More than 150 people had been interviewed.
He had 36 hours of testimony before the Senate, during which you and others on the Judiciary Committee could have asked him anything you had wanted to ask.
He had 65 private meetings with Senators, during which they could have asked him everything they wanted to ask--including, by the way, the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, who had had this information available to talk about.
More than 500,000 pages of executive branch documents had been provided--more than for the last 4 nominees. Of all of his opinions as a judge and of all the cases he was part of, there were about 300 of those. By the way, that is the best way to look at what kind of judge he would be.
He was asked over 1,200 questions for the record. That is like, after you have asked all of the questions you could publicly think of, then one has about a week to answer any questions that have been submitted for the record. He had 1,200 questions submitted for the record that he had to answer in that short period of time.
There were three confidential calls with the committee.
Then, last Friday, our colleagues decided--and I think, as it turned out, maybe wisely so--to do one more final FBI review of whatever they might not have asked about in the other seven FBI interviews that had occurred over the years. The outside number was 1 week. A week ago, 1 week was what was going to be plenty of time. I think some Members in the minority at that time said: Well, maybe even 3 or 4 days. That is what it took with the Clarence Thomas hearing. By the way, that was before these issues became public, because it was turned over to the FBI like it should have been, and in 3 or 4 days, they had talked to everybody they could talk to. So, last week, 3 or 4 days might have been enough, but certainly a week would have been enough, according to the other side. Of course, that was never going to be the case. A week was never going to be enough.
By the way, in background checks, when you are asked to be part of that--if it is your background check--one of the questions you are asked is, are there any drinking problems? Are there any drug problems? He had been asked that over and over again. I think anybody who is interviewed is always asked, do you know of any problems like that?
Usually, a question is, Have you ever heard of anything that we would be interested in if we had heard about it?
Another question often is, Would you tell us three people whom we might not have talked to who might know something about Judge Kavanaugh that we should know?
Over a decade and a half, there have been 7 FBI interviews and 150 people interviewed, the behavioral question, the drinking question, the drug question, which hasn't come up as far as I know, but it is always asked. It has been asked over and over again.
Then you and I and Senator Inhofe went the other morning to hear a review of this last set of interviews, wherein people who possibly would have been able to corroborate something were interviewed and couldn't corroborate it. In many ways, the case got weaker as that moved forward, but we heard that.
Then I heard that afternoon that Senator Schumer said that this is full of hints of misconduct. So I went back this morning and looked through the six prior background checks, and I looked through this background check. As it turns out, I agree with Senator Grassley, who said there was no hint of misconduct.
If there had been a hint of misconduct in the previous five, he would have never been nominated. If there had been a hint of misconduct in the sixth one, he wouldn't have been nominated. It wouldn't have sustained itself. If you look at the pages that are new, there is none there now. So you can say anything you want to say. You can say it is not time enough. You can say, even though no witness ever saw any of these events, you just haven't talked to enough people yet, even though you have talked to everybody who has been mentioned, as far as I know, with any credible charges.
So here we are. Now it is temperament. I don't think there are many Senators who would not have had his same indignation in being accused of something that he, without equivocation, swore did not happen, not only in those instances but in any other instance.
It took 43 days for Ruth Bader Ginsburg to be confirmed. We are at about 83 days, or something like that, now. I looked up a couple of articles just to refresh my memory. When she shows some fire--and she has plenty of it, and I admire that--the description of her is her ``well-known candor.'' That is how you describe it when Justice Ginsburg has her own opinion, like what she said about the Republican nominee last year: He is a faker. He has no consistency about him. He should withdraw. She said: I can't imagine what this place would be and can't imagine what the country would be with Donald Trump as our President.
Now, is that a temperament issue, or is that too political?
By the way, I am not offended by political. The Court never was either. John Marshall, one of the great Justices of the Court, was the Secretary of State for the person who appointed him. Earl Warren, who certainly set a standard for the Court, had never been in any public office except politically elected office before he became the Chief Justice. When he joined the Court in 1953, there were three former Senators sitting on the Court. There were two former Attorneys General sitting on the Court. Both had been appointed by the Presidents for whom they had been Attorneys General. Elena Kagan was the principal lawyer for President Obama. Yet, suddenly, political becomes a problem or temperament becomes a problem.
Thurgood Marshall said while he was on the Court--by the way, I admire him in so many ways. I admire Thurgood Marshall's work and what he did as a lawyer, and the decision that President Johnson made was clearly historic.
As a Justice, Thurgood Marshall said: I wouldn't do the job of dogcatcher for Ronald Reagan.
About President Bush, while he was still a Justice, Thurgood Marshall said: It is said, if you can't say something good about a dead person, don't say it. Well, I consider him dead.
Obviously, he considers him dead and takes the first injunction that he doesn't have anything to say, but there is nothing wrong with people on the Court having opinions.
In this case, we have a judge for whom you could look at 12 years of judging, and you could look at 300 opinions, and you could look at his law school classes he taught. There is plenty to look at. It all, I believe, leads to a couple of conclusions:
One, the way this nomination has been treated has been outrageous. I think my good friend who spoke before said he had never seen anything like it. Well, there has never been anything like this: Hold on to information that can't be corroborated. Only release it after it is clear that the judge has the votes to be confirmed and when you want to do, as the majority leader said, anything you can possibly do as the minority leader to slow down and stop this nomination.
We have plenty to look at here. We cannot set a standard of guilty until proven innocent because then anybody can make any charge at any time, particularly when there are many reasons to believe that there is nothing in 7 background checks, that there is nothing in 150 interviews, that there is nothing in a very visible public career to ever suggest that Judge Kavanaugh is anything different from what he said he was and those of us who will vote for him believe him to be.
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