Read the National Archives' sassy response to lawmakers' requests for Brett Kavanaugh's entire legislative history

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's paper trail is more like a long and winding road, and the National Archives wants senators to know it.

The request for records from Kavanaugh's work under former President George W. Bush won't be ready until late October, the National Archives told Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) in a letter Thursday. Grassley requested the records July 27 and wanted them before Aug. 15, but the Archives' letter shut that down by illustrating just how massive Kavanaugh's records are.

Republicans want to vote to confirm Kavanaugh, who served Bush as White House staff secretary, before the November elections, but Democrats insist on seeing every bit of Kavanaugh's records. So Grassley humored them, asking Bush's presidential library for emails to and from Kavanaugh, his office records, and information from his last judicial confirmation hearing. That's a grand total of 900,000 pages — far more than the 70,000 the Archives dug up for Chief Justice John Roberts' nomination, the letter points out.

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The Archives had a feeling the Senate would want all this information, the letter hints. It began compiling these records as soon as Kavanaugh was nominated, "prior to receiving your request," thank you very much.

Grassley was obviously not too happy about the delay, and posted a photo Thursday estimating just how many boxes the 900,000 pages would fill. As the Archives sassily pointed out, it's a lot. Kathryn Krawczyk