We are now at the point where U.S. senators are having to file their own Freedom of Information Act requests to try to get records that the Trump Administration is refusing to let them see and their Republican colleagues are refusing to press for:
In subsequent tweets Sen. Blumenthal notes that this is both a "last resort" and "unprecedented." It's also unsurprising, at this point: The Kavanaugh nomination has raised a host of issues relating to his "new" opinion that Republican presidents cannot be criminally investigated to his useful rulings for Donald Trump's own business.
Brett Kavanaugh, now nominated to the Supreme Court by a president whose key campaign members are under investigation for possible conspiracy with a Russian espionage effort against the United States, was elevated from a partisan position investigating Republican conspiracy theories under Ken Starr to a lawyer and staff secretary within the George W. Bush White House. He participated during White House efforts to claim legal justification for the torture of war prisoners; Trump-allied Republicans have been attempting to block the release of those key records by, among other tactics, putting Kavanaugh's own then-deputy in charge of determining which to produce and which not to.