Kavanaugh Faces 3rd Day Of Tense Hearings The Capitol
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is facing more fireworks in United States Senate confirmation hearings Thursday.
Democrats are grilling Kavanaugh over whether he believes a president is above the law.
"When a court order requires a president to do something or prohibits a president from doing something under the Constitution or laws of the United States, under our constitutional system that is the final word," Kavanaugh said.
That is just one of several tough issues on day three of the confirmation hearings, where Capitol police again repeatedly arrested protesters who disrupted the committee.
Democrats took the rare step Thursday of publicly releasing confidential documents related to Kavanaugh's views on abortion, race and presidential power.
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar pressed Kavanaugh with questions about campaign finance, impeachment and political attacks on journalists. And she protested the hearing itself, including more than 100,000 documents the White House is refusing to release.
"By ramrodding this through for political reasons, by denying us the access to the documents, we're denying the public the right to see what's out there," Klobuchar said. "And it's just not how we do things in my state, and it's not how we've done things in this committee."
Minnesota Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jim Newberger called the hearings, especially the protests, "an embarrassment." In a conference call with reporters, Newberger called Klobuchar a "do-nothing Senator" trying to obstruct President Trump's nominee.
"I have never, I have never seen such blatant disrespect and obstructionism as I have seen in the last few days with this nomination hearing that they are having here in the U.S. Senate," Newberger said. "This is the United States Senate, not the U.S. mob."
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