Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh met with Senate Democrats on Thursday and seemed to ease off his call for presidential immunity, The Hill reported.
According to The Hill, when pressed on how he, if confirmed to the high court, would view possible criminal charges against President Donald Trump, Kavanaugh appeared to walk back claims the president should be shielded from investigations.
"I did pursue statements that he made about whether incumbent presidents should be subpoenaed, indicted, investigated, prosecuted, and we had a long talk about that," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, told The Hill.
But Durbin said Kavanaugh softened claims made in a 2009 Minnesota Law Review article in which he argued sitting presidents should not be distracted by criminal investigations or questions from prosecutors, The Hill reported.
According to Durbin, Kavanaugh explained he was only suggesting Congress should pass a law shielding sitting presidents from legal inquiries — and was not making any constitutional claim about their immunity, The Hill reported.
"That is a big difference from what most people thought he was saying in that article," Durbin told The Hill.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., who also sits on the panel, pressed Kavanaugh later in the day on how he would handle a criminal case against Trump if it came before the high court, The Hill reported.
"We had a vigorous conversation about both his views while he was staff on the Starr investigation about whether the president should have to be amenable to a subpoena for documents or testimony and then his subsequent public statements," Coons told The Hill.
Coons said Kavanaugh "tried to be very reassuring" during their private meeting about his views on whether presidents must comply with investigations and seemed to walk back past statements.
"I am concerned about trying to square his actual decisional record, things he's written in law review articles, things he's said at conferences, with what he said to me," he told the news outlet.
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who also met with Kavanaugh on Thursday, said in a statement the nominee "refused to commit to recusing himself from matters stemming from special counsel Mueller's investigation."
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