AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
Supreme Court justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing took a dramatic turn Thursday when Democratic senators began releasing confidential documents from Kavanaugh’s work at the George W. Bush White House. The move came in response to the Trump administration withholding more than 100,000 pages of Kavanaugh’s records on the basis of presidential privilege. The Democrats’ move came shortly after The New York Times broke a major story Thursday morning revealing Kavanaugh, as a White House attorney, wrote in 2003 he did not deem the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision to be settled law of the land. Kavanaugh wrote “I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so,” he said. California Senator Dianne Feinstein questioning Kavanaugh Thursday about the emailing.
SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: We have an email that was previously marked confidential but is now public and shows that you asked about making edits to an op-ed that read the following, and I quote: “First of all, it is widely understood, accepted by legal scholars across the board, that Roe v. Wade and it progeny are the settled law of the land.” You responded by saying, and I quote, “I am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so.” This has been viewed as you saying you don’t think Roe is settled.
AMY GOODMAN: Judge Brett Kavanaugh dismissed the significance of his 2003 email.
BRETT KAVANAUGH: The broader point was simply that I think it…