GOP may boycott Kagan hearings
By: Manu Raju
June 21, 2010

Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, on Monday evening warned that Republicans may boycott the start of Elena Kagan's Supreme Court hearings if senators do not get to review scores of documents from the solicitor general's past.

"I don't feel like we're prepared yet," Sessions told POLITICO. "It's becoming more clear that this is not an easy thing to get ready this quick."

Sessions said there appeared to be 1,600 withheld documents, which cover Kagan’s time as a senior White House aide under President Bill Clinton but were not released because of confidentiality concerns. And he called for the Obama administration to at least provide key senators and staff with a chance to privately review the confidential documents so they could weigh in on the validity of the decision to withhold the documents.

Asked if Republicans would boycott the hearings if they did not get to review the documents, Sessions said: “If we feel like we can’t go forward with the hearings … because we don’t have sufficient documents, then yes, we may feel compelled to do whatever it takes to try to insist that the process be done right.”

It remains to be seen whether Sessions’ remarks are anything more than an empty threat, especially as Kagan’s nomination has largely flown under the public radar as it appears to have enough votes to be approved in the Judiciary Committee and on the Senate floor. The hearings could still take place even if no Republicans attended, giving Democrats the opportunity to make their points with no GOP rebuttal.

But taking that unusual course of action would undoubtedly spark a huge amount of media attention and a new round of controversy to Kagan’s nomination to the bench. And the threat shows that Republicans plan to voice objections to how the White House has so far handled the confirmation process and highlight the nominee’s lack of a paper trail because she’s never been a judge.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who has scheduled hearings to begin June 28, said that the committee has received more than 170,000 pages of documents and an unprecedented access to e-mails – far more than any other Supreme Court nominee. And he has said that Republicans have moved the goalposts in their requests for documentation, saying that Democrats did not demand as much from George W. Bush’s Supreme Court nominees of Samuel Alito and John Roberts.

In a letter sent last week to Leahy and Sessions, Gary Stern, general counsel of the National Archives and Record Administration, said the decision to withhold documents was “consistent” with how the agency approached the Roberts nomination and were withheld because of “personal privacy” concerns.

“In this production, we have made every effort to withhold as little as possible and to provide portions of documents where possible, rather than withholding an entire document,” Stern said in the letter.

But Sessions argued there appeared to be a number of potentially revealing documents withheld, including some during the Clinton impeachment proceedings in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

“Who gets to decide what’s private?” Sessions said. “President Clinton is involved in this and President Obama - and she did a lot of things like on the impeachment for Clinton, things that he may not want to be revealed that may be very important for the committee. I don’t know that; I'm just saying hypothetically. I'm worried about that many documents being withheld.”

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