Leahy's Supreme Court Math: 14 = 15,000

In our blog post on May 24, we explained that the Clinton presidential library is in possession of at least 168,000 pages of documents and emails of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan from her four years in the Clinton White House – the largest paper trail available to lend insight into Kagan’s judicial philosophy and help determine if she is fit to be a Supreme Court Justice. 

Terri Garner, director of the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum, stated in an interview that it would be “very difficult” for the library to produce such a great amount of material in time for the June 28 confirmation hearing date set by Judiciary Chairman Senator Pat Leahy (D-VT).

On May 20, POLITICO reported that in response to these concerns,

[Leahy] noted a similar situation arose during the confirmation hearings for Chief Justice John Roberts in 2005. “I don’t want to have a situation like we had with the Roberts hearing. You'll recall we got about 15,000 documents a few hours before the hearing,” Leahy said. “I would hope we would have them faster than we had them in the Roberts hearing even though that procedure was acceptable at that time to the Republicans.”

However, Leahy’s allegations that thousands of documents were received only hours before the confirmation hearings is simply false. 

The Roberts confirmation hearings for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court began on September 12, 2005.  According to records of the National Archives, it released more than 38,000 pages of material stored at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum covering Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr.'s time as an associate counsel to President Reagan from 1982 to 1986 by August 18, 2005.  Another large batch of some 18,000 pages was released on September 2, 2005 – ten days before the hearings commenced.  By the time Roberts's confirmation hearings began September 12, approximately 61,500 pages from the Reagan Library had been made public.

The only documents released on or after September 12, consisted of a mere 14 pages, released on September 14.  Furthermore, according to the National Archives, this release occurred after the commencement of the hearings only due to “a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) appeal of records that had been previously withheld under FOIA exemptions (b)(6) and (b)(7)(c).” 

Leahy's statements about the Roberts' hearings are wrong.  Hopefully, the Kagan Clinton Library documents will arrive at least 10 days before the hearings as they did for Roberts.  However, if they do not the hearings should be delayed.