Brett Kavanaugh to Meet with Democrat Joe Manchin as SCOTUS Confirmation Looms

Sen. Joe Manchin (R-WV) is the first Democrat to announce he will meet with President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court justice nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. The meeting is scheduled for Monday, according to media reports.

Kavanaugh will replace Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is retiring. Unlike some Democrats who have vowed to outright oppose Kavanaugh, Manchin has said he wants to “evaluate” the nominee, who is an accomplished judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Most Democrats say they oppose Kavanaugh because they believe he would vote to overturn the abortion-legalizing Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case and reverse Obama-era government-run health care.

“I will evaluate Judge Kavanaugh’s record, legal qualifications, judicial philosophy and, particularly, his views on health care,” Manchin said when Trump named Kavanaugh as his nominee.

“I believe the Senate should hold committee hearings; senators should meet with him, we should debate his qualifications on the Senate floor and cast whatever vote we believe he deserves,” Manchin said.

Kavanaugh is also scheduled to meet with Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) on Monday.

The meetings come on the day the National Archives released documents from the time when Kavanaugh worked in the independent counsel’s office in the 1990s, according to the Washington Times:

Most of the documents appear to be correspondence and case files that came across Judge Kavanaugh’s desk during his time working for Ken Starr, the independent counsel who investigated the Clintons.

Judge Kavanaugh would later go on to work in the Bush White House before winning a seat on the federal circuit court in D.C., in 2006.

The Archives said it released 1,025 pages of documents.

The Times reports the documents show Kavanaugh’s work parallels the current Department of Justice special counsel investigation into Russian involvement in the Trump presidential campaign.

“Mr Kavanaugh’s conclusion at the time was that Congress had a right to do its own investigation that may overlap the independent counsel, but it didn’t have a right to get a look at the probe’s work,” the Times reported.

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