On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee released the first production of records for Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh’s from his time as associate counsel for George W. Bush. Roughly 5,700 pages of documents were made available to the public. The documents show that Kavanaugh assisted in the effort to pass the Patriot Act and drafted a statement that President Bush incorporated in the bill signing. Kavanaugh wrote that the PATRIOT Act will “update laws authorizing government surveillance,” which he claimed, and the President Bush restated, were from an era of “rotary phones.” In fact, the PATRIOT Act weakened numerous US privacy laws, including the subscriber privacy provisions in the Cable Act and the email safeguards in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Both laws were enacted after the era of rotary phones. Congress amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act after it was revealed that the White House had authorized warrantless wiretapping of Americans beginning in 2002. In an email exchange, Kavanaugh wrote that the PATRIOT Act was a "measured, careful, responsible, and constitutional approach . . . .” EPIC recently submitted two urgent Freedom of Information Act requests for Judge Kavanaugh’s records during his time serving as Staff Secretary for President Bush.
Senator Feinstein has sent an urgent letter to Archivist David S. Ferriero demanding reconsideration of the National Archives' decision to withhold documents related to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. In the letter, Senator Feinstein stated that the "records are crucially important to the Senate's understanding of Mr. Kavanaugh's full record, and withholding them prevents the minority from satisfying its constitutional obligation to provide advice and consent on his nomination." Under the National Archives' unprecedented interpretation of the Presidential Records Act, Feinstein explained that "minority members of the Senate Judiciary Committee now have no greater right to Mr. Kavanaugh's records than members of the press and the public." EPIC recently submitted two urgent Freedom of Information Act requests for Judge Kavanaugh's records during the time he served in the White House when many of the post-September 11 mass surveillance systems were implemented.
A coalition of nonpartisan open government groups has called for the disclosure of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's White House records. In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the coalition asserted that "curtailed document requests will hinder the Senate's ability to fully assess Judge Kavanaugh's background and qualifications..." To uphold the constitution, the coalition emphasized that "senators from both parties must have equal access to all documents relevant to a nominee, in as timely and complete a manner as possible." EPIC recently submitted two urgent Freedom of Information Act requests for Judge Kavanaugh's White House records during the time when many of the post-September 11 mass surveillance systems were implemented.
