“Any journalist would ask, what are you hiding?” Irin Carmon highlights Republicans' secrecy over Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh

From the September 4 edition of CNN's New Day:

Video file

ALISYN CAMEROTA (CO-ANCHOR): In just hours the confirmation hearings begin for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Now, overnight, a lawyer for former President George W. Bush handed over 42,000 pages of documents from Kavanaugh's time in the Bush White House. This is what Democrats wanted. But they argue that they will not have time to review them before the hearing begins this morning. … OK, so, Irin, John Avlon just told me that the way they're going to read all of this is if they have hundreds of elves. I don't think that that's true. So what is the thinking of releasing 42,000 pages that have to be reviewed before 9:30 this morning. 

IRIN CARMON (NEW YORK MAGAZINE): Well any journalist would ask, what are you hiding? Why don't you want a full accounting of this nominee? I'm old enough to remember that back in July when Justice Kennedy retired, Mitch McConnell, reportedly, according to The New York Times, said don't pick Kavanaugh because he’s got such a big paper trail. But our system is such that there's no mechanism if you're in the minority to force this kind of disclosure. We're on an unprecedentedly fast schedule with respect to how many documents are out there about Kavanaugh and his time in the Bush administration. And so the answer is they're just going to skip it. They're just going to rush it through. And there's a lot of questions that we haven't even gotten a chance to ask because the public doesn’t really know. And these 42,000 are on top of the 100,000 that the Trump administration has decided to shield from view entirely, including from the committee.

Previously:

Media should stop treating Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation as inevitable

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was discussed on nightly network news shows for only 84 seconds since July 10

Study: AP quoted pro-Kavanaugh voices 50 percent more in its Supreme Court coverage