The White House violated the separation of powers by refusing to turn over documents connected to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's time in the George W. Bush administration, Sen. Jeff Merkley told The Hill on Monday.
"We have a constitutional process where the president nominates and the Senate reviews the record of the nominee, but we can't do that if the president uses presidential privilege to block our access to key documents, and that is what the president did in this case," the Oregon Democrat said, citing what he claimed were 100,000 documents that were related to Kavanaugh’s service in the White House.
Merkley said that "It's the first time it has ever happened in our country, that this type of censorship has occurred,” calling it “a massive violation of the separation of powers.”
Merkley's remarks came after U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson denied his request to force the disclosure of more than 100,000 pages of documents connected to Kavanaugh's time that he served in the White House Counsel's Office in the Bush administration.
He filed the emergency request last week, arguing that it was impossible to properly evaluate the judge without access to the documents.
Kavanaugh was officially sworn in as a Supreme Court justice on Saturday after the Senate confirmed him in a controverisal vote that divided the nation.
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