Todd Ruger, a Roll Call legal affairs staff writer, on Wednesday said Senate Democrats are "trying every strategy they can" to obstruct the confirmation process of President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Ruger sat down for an interview on the "Bill Press Show" with guest host Jason Dick, Roll Call's deputy editor, where he talked about Senate Democrats' efforts to derail Kavanaugh's confirmation.
Dick said Democrats had been "kind of quietly" boycotting Kavanaugh except for vulnerable Senate Democrats like Sens. Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), and Joe Manchin (W.Va.). However, he said it appeared the "dam burst a little bit" this week with the decision by several Senate Democrats to meet with Kavanaugh. Dick said Kavanaugh met with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y), Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.), and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) this week.
"I think what the Democrats are doing is trying every strategy they can to get in the way of Kavanaugh or stop Kavanaugh, delay Kavanaugh, find out everything they can about Kavanaugh," Ruger said.
He added Democrats are searching for a "golden nugget" that would enable them to convince at least two Republican senators, such as Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) or Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), to vote no on Kavanaugh's confirmation.
Ruger went on to discuss how Senate Democrats want to review thousands of documents from Kavanaugh's tenure as White House staff secretary to former President George W. Bush.
"There's tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of those documents. And so they held out for a meeting with Kavanaugh saying, 'We are going to hold out until we get these documents.' And then it kind of became clear that that wasn't going to work, so then they relented and then said, 'We're going to meet with him and press him on documents.' They get a couple headlines out of not meeting with him, and they get some headlines out of meeting with him. And that's just all part of trying to do whatever they can," Ruger said.
Following former Trump attorney Michael Cohen's guilty plea on Tuesday and his implication of Trump in a campaign finance violation, Senate Democrats have been calling for the Judiciary Committee to postpone Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) called the case a "game changer" in a speech on the Senate floor on Wednesday. He slammed Kavanaugh for what he characterized as having radical views on the extent of presidential authority, and he said Kavanaugh's "refusal" to say a president must comply with a subpoena makes it dangerous to confirm the Supreme Court nominee, especially given Cohen's implication of Trump.
Cohen, Trump's former lawyer and longtime fixer, pleaded guilty in federal court on Tuesday to eight criminal charges. He also said that, during the 2016 presidential campaign, he arranged payments at the direction of Trump to two women to keep them from speaking about affairs they claimed they had with the president.
"It's a game changer. Should be," Schumer said. "A president, identified as an unindicted co-conspirator of a federal crime … is on the verge of making a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, a court that may someday soon determine the extent of the president's legal jeopardy. In my view, the Senate Judiciary Committee should immediately pause the consideration of the Kavanaugh nomination."