i know you are anxious. when i was a practicing lawyer a long time ago in trial, the other side either sbroid or concealed evidence, i knew i was going to be able to have a convincing argument to close that case. what were they hiding? why won't they let you see the tape or the documents they can't find? you know that presumption now is against you because of all the documents held back for the sake of this nation. for the sanctity of the constitution we both honor, step up. ask this meeting. this gathering to suspend until all the documents of your public career are there for the american people to see. thank you, mr. chairman. >> senator lee. >> thank you, judge kavanaugh and chairman and also ashley and margaret and eliza for being here. i'm going to start by saying that the fact that there is so

much angst over a single nominee tells you everything you need to know about why it is that we need judges now more than ever who are willing to are read the law and interpret it based on what the law says versus something else. it tells you more than anything else about the need to restore a discussion of civics in this country. to restore a discussion about federalism and separation of powers and where power is concentrated and where it shouldn't be. what the role of each branch of the federal government is and is not. many of the comments and outbursts we had today suggest we need to return to the fundamental principals. i don't care if you are a liberal democrat or conservative republican or something in between. the principals apply to which we have sworn an oath and principals dha we would do well

to restore and focus on again. if we were to return to an era of civility, we will burn on the basis of the foundational structural principals within our constitution. over the next few days, judge kavanaugh, a number of members of committees will ask you questions about cases you handled as a lawyer and as a judge and about your record and qualifications. this suggestion thaw misled this committee at any point in your hearings is absurd and the absurdity will be born out in the coming days, i am certain of it. some of the questions will be fair and others will be unfair. i think it's important for us to acknowledge that at the outset. when you look back at history,

answering these kinds of questions, this is sort of how the practice of holding these hearings began. so the senators could ask nominees how they might vote, how they might rule in particular cases. this didn't always happen. in fact, it wasn't until 1916 that this even started. you see, there have been 113 justices confirm to the supreme court so far. the first 66 were confirmed without even holding a hearing. the idea of a hearing is relatively new. it's about 102 years old. we went between 125 and 130 years under our constitutional republic without having a hearing, but regardless we started having hearings over a century ago. the first supreme court confirmation hearing occurred in 1916 with justice bran dies.

some called for a hearing. if we are honest with ourselves and about history, justice bran dies was jewish. senators it wanted to determine whether he would use his seat on the supreme court, to advocate for as a private citizen and as a public citizen. they want to know how he might vote in particular cases. they didn't ask the justice to testify significantly. they did in fact ask outside witnesses what they thought about his nomination. the next important moment one could argue that considered in 1939 when felix frankforter became the first nominee to himself testify before the

committee. at the time frankfurter was controversial because he was born overseas, but senators worried that frankfurter was a radical based on his defense of anarchists in court. so again, senators wanted assurances about how frankfurter might rule in particular cases, in particular, what results he might reach in a particular type of case. frankforter, however, significantly declined to engage with senators on those topics and insisted his public record spoke for itself. justice stewart's nomination in 1959 was another turning point. senators seeking to resist brown versus board of education, one of the steward of his views on integrations. others wanted to grill him on national security. senators turned up the heat a little bit more in that hearing.

like frankfurter before him, justice stewart did not provide substantive answers to their questions. when they wanted to know how he would rule, he appropriately declined as his predecessors had. 28 years later, 28 years after justice stewart came through this committee. they considered robert bourk's nominati nomination. this was a turning point and in my view remains a rock bottom moment for the senate and for the senate judiciary committee. without getting into the gory details here, it suffices to say that senator ted kennedy and the judge did not agree on certain matters of constitutional law. and kennedy's response was to savage, unfairly in my opinion, the results that the judge would

reach if confirmed to the supreme court. history shows over the better part of a century the committee created something of a new norm. a norm in which members demand that nominees speak about specific cases in return for favorable treatment from the committee as the jurists are going through the process. nominees for the most part, have gracefully resisted confirmation in exchange for promises about how they will vote in particular cases. to give two famous examples, justice scalia refused to say whether mar bury versus madison was settled law on the ground it could come before him and sure enough in ortiz visit united states, they implicated the scope of mar bury. likewise, justice ruth bader beginsburg had no previews, no

forecasts, no hints. every current member of the supreme court has adhered to a similar principal of what we might call the ginsburg standard. even though nominees have not caved to the pressure, i still believe that there is some aspects of the senate's approach here that might do it disservice to the country and might be frowned upon by future historians. if senators ask about outcomes, the public will be more sbiltsd or at least more inclined to think judges are supposed to be outcome mind and the whole approach is to judging and supposed to be what judging is about. this undermines the very legitimacy of the courts themselves. the injury legitimacy of the tribunal you have been nominated by the president to serve on. no free people would accept a

judiciary that imposes its own policy preferences on the country, absent fidelity to legal principal. there is a better way for the senate to approach its work. this process, in my opinion, should be about your qualifications about your character and most importantly about your approach to judging. your own view about the role of the federal judiciary. it should not be about results in a select number of cases. now, you are obviously exceptionally well qualified. even your staunchest critics would not claim ourselves. your experience as a practicing lawyer and your experience in government and 12 years of experience sitting on what many refer to as the second highest court in the land, the u.s. cower of appeals for the d.c. circuit. you are independent and have

written that some of the greatest mosts in american judicial history have been when judges stood up to the other branches. you said that judges cannot be buffaloed, influenced or pressured into worrying too much about transient popularity when we are trying to decide a case. one of the most important duties of a judge is to stand up for the unpopular party who has the correct position. and you have lived up to your words during your time on the bench. everyone knows that you served in the bush administration. and yet when you became a judge, in only two years, you ruled against the bush administration a total of eight times. for you it simply doesn't matter who the parties are. it simply doesn't matter that you may have worked for an administration before you became

a judge. the only thing that matters is your commitment to correctly applying the law to the facts of any particular case. as far as your approach to judging, you have appropriate respect for precedent. you coauthored an 800 page book that among other things explain that is a change in a court's membership alone should not throw former decisions open to reconsideration or justify their reversal. you explained that for precedent to be overruled, it must not be just wrong, but a case with serious practical consequences. you voted to overturn circuit precedent only four times during your time on the d.c. circuit and each of those cases involved a unanimous decision reached by your colleagues and you followed abiding precedent if you believed that binding precedent

was wrongly decided. you decided cases based on legal merits and not the identity of the parties and certainly not based on any political beliefs that you may harbor. we have already heard that your nomination will somehow be bad for women, for the environment, for labor unions, for civil rights and a host of other things that americans hold near and dear. i have a laundry list of cases for which people in each of those groups, but there is a more fundamental point that needs to be made. the judiciary's decisions are legitimate. only to the extent that they are based on sound legal principal and reasoning. and ruling for a preferred party is not itself a sound legal principal. it's quite to the contrary. jury rigging decisions and back

filling legal reasoning to reach a particular result, a particularly politically acceptable result in a particular case. no matter how desirable that result might be in the instance is not a legitimate mode of judicial decision making and no free people purporting to have an independent judiciary should ever be willing to settle for that. my plea to my colleagues today is we ask judge car gnaw hard questions. i believe we are required to do so. the senate is not and never should be a rubber stamp when it comes to issuing lifetime appointments, each lifetime appointments on the highest court in the land. if you disagree with an opinion he's written, make a legal argument as to that issue. explain why you think it's wrong. don't complain about the

results. as if the result itself is proof that he's wrong when you separate out the result from the legal analysis. from the faxes and how they interact with the law in that particular case. don't ask him to make promises about outcomes in particular cases. if it's unacceptable for the president to impose a litmus test, it is surely unacceptable for the united states senate to do so. judge kavanaugh, i look forward to your testimony and i'm grateful to you and your willingness to serve our country and be considered for this important role. >> senator whitehouse. >> thank you, mr. chairman. when is pattern evidence of bias? in court, pattern is evidence of bias all the time.

evidence on which juries and trial judges rely to show discriminatory intent, to show a common scheme, to show bias. when does a pattern prove bias? i wish this were an idle question. it's relevant to the pattern of the roberts court when its republican majority goes off on partisan excursions through the civil law. that is when all five republican appointees, the roberts five we can call them, go raiding off together and no democratic appointee joins them. does this happen often? the roberts five has gone on almost 80 of these partisan

excursions since roberts became chief. that's a lot of times. and there is a feature to these 80 cases. they almost all implicate interests important to the big funders and influencers of the republican party. when the republican justices go off on these five justice partisan excursions, there is a big republican corporate or partisan interest involved 92% of the time. the tiny handful of these cases that don't implicate an interest of the big republican influencers is so flukishly few, we can set them aside. let's look at the 73 cases that all implicate a major republican party interest.

again, 73 is a lot of case at the supreme court. is there a pattern to these 73 cases? oh, yes, there is. every time a big republican corporate or partisan interest is involved, the big republican interest wins. every time. let me repeat. in 73 partisan decisions where there is a big republican interest at stake, the big republican interest wins, every damned time. thus the mad scramble of big republican interest groups to protect a roberts five that will reliably give them wins. really big wins sometimes. i note that when the roberts five saddles up, these so-called conservatives are anything but

judicially conservative. they readily overturn precedent, toss out statutes passed by wide bipartisan margins, and decide on broad constitutional issues that they need not reach. modesty, originalism, star deice issis. all these principals all have the hoof prints of the roberts five all across their backs, wherever those principals got in the way of those wins for the big republican interests. be the litany of roberts five decisions explains why big republican interests want judge kavanaugh on the court so badly. so badly that republicans trampled so much senate precedent to push him through.

so let's review the highlights real. what do big republican interests want. what has the roberts five delivered? respect republicans jerry mappedermapped -- jerry mander elections. help them keep minority voters away from the polls. shelby county 5-4 and bartlet v stickland and abbott v perez 5-4 despite the trial judge finding the texas legislature actually intended to target and suppress minority voters. and the big one. help corporate front group money flood elections. big money interests love unlimited power to buy elections, lobby, and threaten and bully congress. mccutchen, 5-4 counting the

concurrence. bullock, 5-4, and the infamous 5-4 citizens united decision which i believe stands beside lockner on the court's role of shame. what else do big influencers want? to get out of courtrooms. big influencers hate courtrooms because they are lobbying and election earring and threatening doesn't work or at least it's not supposed to. in a courtroom, big influencers are used to getting their way and have to suffer the indignity of equal treatment. so the roberts five protects corporations from group class action lawsuits, wal-mart v dukes, 5-4. comcast, 5-4 and this past term epics systems, 5-4. the roberts five steers customers and workers away from courtrooms and into mandatory arbitration.

conception. italian colors and represent a center, all roberts five. epic systems does double duty because workers can't even arbitrate as a group. hindering access to the courthouse generally. protecting corporations from being taken to court by employees. harmed through pay discrimination, led better 5-4. age discrimination, 5-4. vance, 5-4 and retaliation nassar, 5-4. from liability from international human rights violations, jessner, 5-4. corporations are not in the constituti constitution. ju juries are. juries are the one thing designed to protect against encroachments by private wealth and power.

of course the roberts five rules for wealthy corporations over jury rights every time. with nerry a mention of the 7th amendment. a classic, helping big business bust unions. harris v quinn, 5-4 and janice v affect me with a 40-year precedent. lots of big influencers are polluters who like to pollute for free. the roberts five delivers decisions who let polluters pollute. 5-4. national association of home landlorders weakening for endangered species. 5-4. michigan versus air polluters, if 5-4. there is the procedural abhorrent decision to stop the epa clean power plan.

pattern. then come roberts five bonus decisions advancing a far right social agenda. upholding and hobby lobby granting religious rights over the health care rights of employees. letting states deny truthful information about reproductive choices. all 5-4, all republican. reanimating for the gun industry, a former chief justice called a fraud. both decisions 5-4. trump v hawaii 5-4. hubber stamping the muslim tramp ban. in case wall street was being left out, janice capital, 5-4. pattern. no wonder the american people feel the game is rigged. here's how the game works. big business fund the federalist society which picked gorsuch and now you.

as the white house counsel admitted, they insourced the federalist society for this selection. exactly how the nominees were picked and who was in the room where it happened and who had a vote or a veto or promise, that's all a deep dark secret. then dig business and part an groups fund the crisis network that runs dark money to influence senators in confirmation votes as they have done for gorsuch and now for you. who pays millions of dollars for that? what their expectations are is a deep dark secret. these groups also fund republican election campaigns with dark money and keep the identity of big donors a deep dark secret and 90% of your documents are to us, a deep dark secret. then once the nominees on the court, the same groups with ties to the koch brothers and the

other political machine file friend of the court to signal their kiwishes to the roberts five. who was behind those friends is another deep dark secret. it has gotten so weird that republican justices now even sent hints back to big business interests about how they would like to help them next and big business lawyers rush out to lose cases, to lose cases just to rush up before the friendly court pronto. that's what happened in the fredericks janice episode. the u.s. chamber of commerce is the biggest corporate lobby of them all. big oil, big tobacco, big pharma, big guns. with justice gorsuch riding with the roberts five, they won nine out of 10 cases they weighed in on. since 2006, they have given the chamber more than three quarters of their total votes n. all

civil cases they voted for the chamber position fully 90% of the time and in these 5-4 cases i highlighted, 100%. people are noticing. they describe the court's service to republican interests. to be in wrote green house said the republican appointed majority is committed to harnessing the supreme court to an ideological agenda. or instein described the new reality of today's supreme court polarized along partisan lines where it paralyzes institutions and the rest of society in a fashion we have never seen. and the american public knows it, too. the american public thinks the supreme court treats

corporations more favorably than individuals compared to vice-versa by a 7-1 margin. 49% of americans think corporations get special treatment there. let's look at where you fit in. a republican political operative your whole career who never tried a case. you made your political bones helping the salacious prosecution of president clinton and leaking information to the press. as an operative in the second bush white house, you cultivated relationships with insiders like nomination guru leonard leo, the federalist society architect of your court nominations. on the d.c. circuit, you gave more than 50 speeches to the federalist society. that looks like auditioning. on the d.c. circuit, you showed readiness to join the roberts with big political wins with republican and corporate interests. unleashing special interest money and protecting

corporations from liability and helping polluters pollute and striking down common sense gun regulations and keeping plaintiffs out of court and perhaps more important for the current occupant of the oval office, expounding a nearly limitless vision of presidential immunity from the law. your alignment with right wing groups as friends of the court, 91%. when big business trade associations weighed in, 76%. this to me is what corporate capture of the courts looks like. there are big expectations for you. the shadowy dark money front group that the network is spending tens of millions of dark money to push for your confirmation, they clearly have big expectations about how you will rule on dark moan. the nra poured millions into your confirmation, promising members that you will break the tide. they clearly have big expectations on how you will vote on guns.

white house counsel don mcgahn admitted there is a coherent plan here where the judicial selection and the deregulatory effort are the flip side of the same point. polluters have big expectations for you on their deregulatory effort. finally, you come before us nominated by a president named in open court as directing criminal activity and a subject of ongoing criminal investigation. you displayed views on executive immunity from the law. if you are in that seat because the white house has big expectations that you will protect the president from the due process of law, that should give every senator pause. tomorrow we will hear a lot of confirmation ed kit. it is mostly a sham. you know the game. you coached judicial nominees to

just tell senators that they have a commitment to follow supreme court precedent and they will adhere to statutory text that they have no ideological agenda, end quote. fairy tales. at his hearing, justice roberts said he just called balls and strikes, but this pattern, 73-0 of the roberts five qualifies him to have nascar-style corporate badges on his ropes. alito said what a strong principal the sdisis was. it means to leave things decided when it suits our purposes. gorsuch delivered the key fifth vote in the busting janice decision. he too pledged in his hearing to follow the law of judicial precedent. assures us he was not a

philosopher king and promised to give equal concern to every person poor or rich, mighty or meek. how did that turn out? great for the rich and mighty. gorsuch is the single most corpora corporate-friendly court already full of them. ruling for corporate interests in 70% of the cases and in every single case where his vote was determinative. the president assures e va van gel teles his 56 would attack roe vs. wade. despite assurances about precede precedent, your words said it is not settled law since the court can overrule its press depth. mr. chairman, we have seen this movie before. we know how it ends. the sad fact is that there is no consequence for telling the committee fairy tales about sdis

us and riding off with the roberts five, trampling across whatever precedent gets in the way of letting those dig republican interests keep winning 5-4 partisan decisions. 73-0, mr. kavanaugh. every damned time. thank you, mr. chairman. >> senator cruz. >> chairman, i have documents to support this. may i ask they be entered? >> without objection. so entered. >> thank you, mr. chairman. judge kavanaugh. welcome. welcome to your family and friends. demonstrating your good judgment, your wife was born and raised in west texas and you and she have been friends of heidi and mine for 20 years. thank you for your decades of public service and i'm sorry that your daughters had to endure the political circus of

this morning. that's the last of the world that is washington in 2018. i want to discuss what this hearing is about and what it's not about. first, this hearing is not about the qualifications of the nominee. judge kavanaugh is by any objective measure unquestionably qualified for the supreme court. he is one of the most respected federal judges in the country. he has impeccable academic credentials even if he did go to yale and you served over a decade for the d.c. circuit, often referred to as the second highest court in the land. our colleagues are not trying to make the argument that he is not qualified. i evaporate heard any attempt to make that argument. second, this hearing is not about his judicial record. judge kavanaugh has 3 hundred published opinions that amount to over 10,000 pages issues in

his role as a federal appellate judge. a judge's record is by far the most important of what kind of justice that nominee will be. and tellingly we have heard very little from democratic senators about the actual substance of judge kavanaugh's judicial record. third, it's important to understand today is also not about documents. we heard a lot of arguments about documents. there is an old saying for trial lawyers. if you have the fax, pound the facts. if you have the law, pound the law. if you have neither, pound the table. we are seeing a lot of table pounding this morning. the democrats are focused on procedural issues because they don't have substantive points strong enough to derail this nomination and substantive criticism with judge kavanaugh's actual record so they are trying to divert everyone with procedural issues.

let's talk about the documents for a moment. the claims that the democrats are putting forward on documents don't with stand any serious scrutiny. judge kavanaugh has produced 511,948 pages of documents. that includes more than 17,000 pages in direct response to this committee's written questionnaire which is the most comprehensive response ever submitted to this committee. the more than half million pages of documents turned into this committee is more than the number of pages we received for the last five supreme court nominees combined. listen to that fact again. the over half million documents turned over to this sidney is more than the last five nominees combined. so what's all the fuss over the do you mean that is not turned over? most concern the three years as

the staff secretary for president george w. bush. many people don't know what a staff secretary does, but that's the position in charge of all of the paper that comes into and out of the oval office. critically, the staff secretary is not the author of the paper coming into and out of the oval office. that paper is typically written by the attorney general, secretary of state and other cabinet members and other white house officials. the staff secretary is is the funnel for collecting views and transferring the paper back and forth. in other words, those documents written by other people say nothing, zero about judge kavanaugh's views and say nothing, zero about what kind of justice judge kavanaugh would make. but they are by necessity the most sensitive and confidential documents in the white house. they are the documents going to the president. this is the advice and

deliberations of the president at the senior level and the staff secretary is the cant wit for the documents. why are the democrats putting so much energy in saying hand over all of those documents? because they know beyond a shadow of doubt that president george w. bush's white house team is not going to allow every piece of paper that went to the president to be made public any more than any other white house would. republican or democrat, no white house would allow every piece of paper that went to and from the president to be made public. indeed there are rules and laws and procedures for when and how presidential papers become pchblt it is utterly irrelevant to what judge kavanaugh thinks, believes, or have said. it would open up fishing

expeditions to relitigate george w. bush's record as president and what cabinet members and advisers may or may not have said. but it is at the end of the day an attempt to distract and delay and indeed the multiple motions we have seen to delay the confirmation reveals the whole joke. their objective is delay. so what is this fight about? if it's not about documents or judge kavanaugh's credentials or judicial record, what is this fight about? i believe this fight is nothing more and nothing less than an attempt by colleagues to relitigate the 2016 presidential election. 2016 was a hard fought election all-around and it was the first presidential election in 60 years where american americans went to the polls with a vacant seat on the supreme court that the next president would fill. americans knew who had been in

that seat. the late justice antonin ka scalia. the supreme court seat was directly on the ballot. both candidates knew the experience of the vacant seat and it was a major issue of contention in the presidential election. donald trump and hillary clinton were both clear about what kind of justices and judges they would appoint. during all three debates, both were asked what qualities were important to them when selecting a justice. secretary clinton's answer was clear. she wanted a justice who would be a liberal progressive willing to rewrite the constitution and impose liberal policy agendas that she could not get through the democratic process and the congress of the united states would not adopt. that she hoped five unelected lawyers would force on the

american people. that's what hillary clinton promised for her nominees. candidate trump said he was looking to appoint judges in the mold of justice scalia and judges to interpret the constitution based on the original public meeting for the statutes according to the text and uphold the rule of law and treat parties fairly regardless of who they are and where they come from. then candidate donald trump also did something that no candidate has done before. he published a list of nominees he would choose from when filling the seat, providing unprecedented transparency to the american people. all of this was laid before the american people as they went to the polls on november 8th, 2016. and the american people made a choice that night. my democratic colleagues are not happy with the choice of american people made, but as

president obama said, elections have consequences. because of american people had the chance to vote a national referendum on the direction of the supreme court, i said a number of times that justice gorsuch's nomination and judge kavanaugh's nomination have almost a super legitimacy in that they were ratified and decided by the american people in a direct vote in 2016. the democratic obstruction is trying to reverse the obstruction. they are unhappy with the choice the american people want. there is a reason that the american people want strong constitutionalists on the u.s. supreme court. most americans, and i know the overwhelming majority of texans want judges to follow the law and not impose policy preferences on the rest of us and will be faithful to the constitution and the bill of rights. justices who uphold liberties

like free speech like religious liberty and the second amendment. that's what this election was about. if you look at each of these, let's take free speech. it's worth noting that in 2014, every democratic member of this committee voted to amend the united states constitution to repeal the free speech provisions of the first amendment and sadly every democrat in the senate agreed with that position. voting to give congress unprecedented power to regulate political speech. it was a sad day for this institution. years earlier, ted kennedy, the great liberal lion opposed a similar effort and said we haven't amended the bill of rights in over 2 hundr00 years w is not the time to start. not a single democrat had the courage to agree with ted kennedy and support free speech.

indeed they voted party line to repeal the free speech provisions. that is radical and extreme and part of the reason the american people voted for a president who would put justices on the court who will protect our free speech. how about religious liberty? that's another fundamental protection that the democrats in the senate have gotten extreme and radical on. indeed our colleagues want justices who will rubber stamp efforts like the obama administration's efforts litigating against the little sisters of the poor and against catholic nuns trying to force them to a pay for abortion inducing drugs and others. that is a radical and extreme proposition and to show how dramatic democrats have gotten, every senate democrat a few years ago voted to gut the religious freedom restoration act. legislation that passed congress

with overwhelming bipartisan support in 1993 and was signed into law by bill clinton and two decades later, the party determined that the freedom is inconvenient for policy and political objectives and want justices that will further that assault on religious liberty. let's take the second amendment. the presidential debates, hillary clinton promised to nominate justice to overturn helder versus district of columbia. helder is the landmark decision issued by justice scalia, lakely the most significant decision of his tenure on the bench and it upheld the individual right to keep and bear arms. hillary clinton was quite explicit. she wanted judges to overturn helder and a number of colleagues, that's what they want as well. overturning helder would be a radical proposition. you have to understand what they inside helder. they said that the second

amendment protects no individual right to keep and bear arms whatsoever. it protects merely a collective right of the militia. the consequence of that proposition would mean that congress could pass a law, making it a felony, a criminal offense for any american to own any firearm and neither you nor i nor any american would have any individual right whatsoever under the second amendment. it would effectively erase the second amendment from the bill of rights. that is a breath takingly extreme proposition. it is what hillary clinton promised they would do and at the end of the day what this fight is about. we know that every democratic member of this committee is going to vote no. we don't have to speculate. they publicly announced they are voting no. doesn't depend on what they read in documents and what judge kavanaugh says in this hearing. they announced ahead of time

they are voting no and most of the democrats in the senate announced that. but everyone should understand judge kavanaugh handed over more documents than any nominee, more than the last five combined, republican and democratic nominees. this is not about documents and not about qualification or record. what it is about is politics. it is about democratic senators trying to relitigate the 2016 election and just as importantly, working to begin litigating the 2020 presidential election. we had an opportunity for the american people to speak and they did. they voted in 2016 and they wanted judges and justices who will be faithful to the constitution. that's why i'm confident at the end of what shakespeare would describe as a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, i am confident that judge kavanaugh will be justice kavanaugh and

confirm to the united states supreme court. thank you, mr. chairman. >> we are going to take a break now. and -- wait a minute! we are going take a break now and 30 minutes is what the democrats would like to have. we will return at 1:17. gorsuch returned about 10 minutes later than that. so be on time. >> okay. you heard the man. we will be back at 1:17 eastern time and in the interim, an opportunity for us to discuss what exactly it is we just witnessed. started out as a car accident of a hearing. i am joined here in new york by a former acting solicitor

general of this country who argued 37 cases of his own before the supreme court and veteran of the southern district of new york. neal, to you, what did we just witness? >> i think we witnessed the frustration of the american people. the hearing began with protests and shouting stuff that i have never seen before. >> a big gambit by the democrats. >> the democrats saying we can't let this proceed. we want a vote and they are entitled to a vote, a role call on whether or not the hearing should proceed. the senate and the chair said i'm not even going to have a vote. there is a reason why the american people are frustrated. there games being played about the senate rules and about these documents. there over 100,000 pages. the trump administration refused to turn over citing executive privilege. the thing that is so hypocri

hypocritical is it was senator grassley during the kagan hearing that said we can't let it proceed because you have not provided all the documents. they set a date that all the do you means would be produced. this is the opposite of that. >> mimi, same question. >> this is about trump and not just the specific nominee, kavanaugh. several of the senators expressed that, durbin in particular, about how the reason the american people are so frustrated and scared is because this president who has just absolutely no respect for not just the rule of law, but our system of law as exemplified perfectly by his tweet last night about the ag should not prosecute republicans. that president is getting to pick a supreme court justice. it scares people. it's not just process as senator

grassley i think said or senator cruz, it's a real fear of why is this president getting to put someone on the supreme court who will be for a very long time when he has absolutely no respect for how even that court or our system works. >> during what would normally be her hour of the day on television, andrea mitchell has been among those watching with us. andrea, what in your view have we just witnessed? >> well, it was a car wreck. and it is the democrats being very aggressive in trying to say that this is being railroaded. they are saying why the rush. we need to see the documents. grassley is saying there are more documents than have ever been seen before but not proportionately. that the very small percentage they have seen or they're allowed to discuss and ask questions from is frustrating the democrats. they know they don't have the votes. but they, especially with the selection in play, want to show that they are being very

aggressive. and they're far more aggressive than some of us thought they would be, even talking to some of these senators. they thought that grassley's gavel would have prevented them from speaking out as much as they have. we've seen booker and durbin and others. cory booker jumping in line and saying, and interrupting. dianne feinstein also going through her litany of what her concerns are, gun control, which of course has been ever since she first pushed through the assault weapons ban in 1994 as a freshman senator from california. has been a big issue. and of course roe v. wade. but also saying that it's not just roe v. wade, it's that roe is decided on the basis of privacy so it affected same sex marriage, medical, end of life decisions. so these are big concerns and they're going to use this hearing. they don't think that they can stop it. but they're going to try to slow it down as much as they can.

i think that is what they attempted to do. the protest as well from the audience, you know, you and i, brian, go back to the bork hearings and other hearings. we've seen other controversial supreme court nominees before but i've never seen anything like that. >> we stopped counting at around 31 arrests apparently disorderly charges being pressed against all these people taken out of the room. the gallery, as you know, is then refreshed with people, citizens, waiting in line to come and see. it's impossible to predict who's going to be among those rising up and raising their voices. >> in fact, orrin hatch in reading his prepared statement was at one point shouting just to override the protesters. there is, as you and mimi and neil have said, a great deal of frustration certainly exacerbated by that tweet last night against the justice department saying that the justice department is supposed to be, according to the

president, a political arm of the white house, which not the role of the justice department in these two indictments of duncan hunter and of course of congressman collins. so this is i think what has certainly enraged and angered the opposition. the way this is all done. and of course uf got a lot of other breaking news to consider. going on and we've been watching these hearings. of course, the person chosen to shepherd senator kavanaugh, excuse me, judge kavanaugh through, has just been appointed to the senate while we've been in this hearing. >> just one of the stories on our docket today. apparently the governor of arizona has decided to go with a veteran former arizona senator jon kyl. the man who, as a veteran of the senate, has been sherpaing the nominee around the senate. it's already been pointed out on

social media of course no more dependable a republican vote than the man whose job it has been to show him around. ari melber has been watching the hearing from just above the hearing which must have given you an interesting vantage point on the protests. >> certainly true. as you pointed out, we don't typically count those type of protests. we see them in other hearings. not typically in these. from our view, we saw several different protesters as you mentioned being removed. some being carried by capitol hill. that being a point of frustration for the senators. big picture, i think what we saw here was the most contentious beginning to a supreme court nomination hearing in the modern era. not only because of those protests but because of the fireworks that you've reported on that kicked off this hearing that was very unusual. those procedural efforts to try to draw a line. the democrats saying the majority of the important material that they still need to get to vet this nominee has not

been made available. and that they really want to delay or some other mechanism before they even go forward. of course, there is a microcosm here, brian, on the committee, as they will be expected in the senate, which is if the republicans stay united, they have the votes. they have a slim majority. and so what the democrats i think are trying to do is to up-end that by being untraditional, by drawing a line, by trying in some way to make this look and feel different. to sound a harm for the american public. but ultimately the question does remain the same. does anything that happens when the questioning begins tomorrow or any new information that might come from the documentings that just arrivaled or that could come if those documents are obtained, that actually changes the mind of some republican senators. the other thing i think we saw that was expected once we got into opening statements was several democrats really hammering the criminal cloud that does hang over this presidency and this nominee's history on executive power. and i think we can expect him -- the judge to really explain that

in his answers because that's something that's not precluded by past rulings or things he can't get into when he might say on abortion or those issue, he could rule on them. >> all right, our studio just above the hearing room, ari, thanks. we're going to take a break in our coverage. when come back, the news already filtering out. the blockbuster new book by bob woodward, what it's already doing to and saying about the trump white house. hi i'm joan lunden.

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we're back and as you can see everyone in that hearing room with the chance to get out of the hearing room and take on as many calories and as much caffeine as possible is taking advantage of the opportunity to do so. you heard chairman grassley say we'll be gavled back in at 17 minutes after the hour. roughly 17 minutes from now. a remarkable morning session to be sure. we have never seen democrats on this or any other committee come out quite the same way they did today. we have never seen organized protesters one by one by one act, rising up, raising their voices to disrut and it's also been mentioned what an interesting paneply of speakers we heard from. some have mentioned on social media public speaking is apparently not onef