Fix the Court Presses for Kavanaugh Documents

Judicial transparency group Fix the Court continues to try to get info on Brett Kavanaugh's time at the White House and working on the Starr Report.

Kavanaugh, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, was nominated this week to succeed Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court. Kennedy is exiting at the end of the month.

It filed two lawsuits this week following unfulfilled FOIA requests for documents and now has followed that up with an appeal of a FOIA determination by the George W. Bush Library and Museum that its request for Kavanuagh's White House counsel and staff secretary files would take 20 years to fulfill and would not include several thousand pages (13,943 to be exact) that were exempt, mostly under the Presidential Records Act.

Related: Suit Filed to Compel Access to Kavanaugh Records

To be fair, the requested information includes over a million records and electronic files.

Fix the Court filed the FOIA request with the library in May 2017--Kavanaugh was on the list for the President's first nomination, which ultimately went to Neil Gorsuch--but says that request was not processed until April of this year.

The group says the response was insufficient because the library did not explain the basis for the exemptions.

"Given Mr. Kavanaugh’s status as President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, substantial and significant public benefit would result from the timely disclosure of the requested records," FTC wrote in filing its appeal with the library.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.