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

Brett Kavanaugh.
(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

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.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

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

I requested abt 1 million pages from Judge Kavanaugh’s time as govt lawyer for fair+thorough SCOTUS vetting That’s more than the last 5 SCOTUS nominees COMBINED Democrats who already oppose say its not enough. How much do you need to know to vote no?A post shared by Chuck Grassley (@senatorchuckgrassley) on Aug 2, 2018 at 10:13am PDT

Continue reading for free

We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.

Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.

Kathryn Krawczyk

Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.