Cory Booker's dramatic violation of Senate rules, explained
In a dramatic interaction during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the Supreme Court on Thursday morning, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) deliberately violated rules against releasing protected information, risking, in his own estimation, the loss of his position.
Here's why he did so — and what's likely to happen as a result.
At issue are documents provided to the committee before the hearing process began. (Kavanaugh must be approved by the committee before his nomination can be sent to the full Senate for full confirmation.) Booker took issue with how and when some of those documents were released, including a set released after having been vetted by William Burck, an attorney for former president George W. Bush. (Kavanaugh served in Bush's administration.)
One of the documents included in the Burck-reviewed set was an email revealing the nominee's views on racial profiling — but because it had been deemed “committee confidential” after a review, Booker was not allowed to refer to it or ask Kavanaugh questions about it. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of the committee, established a process for review of that confidentiality, but Booker argued that the process was too cumbersome, perhaps deliberately, to allow him to make reference to the document in time.
He explicitly criticized the withholding of the profiling document.
"The fact that there is nothing in that document that's personal information, there's nothing national security-related, the fact that it was labeled as committee confidential, exposes that this process, sir, is a bit of a sham,” Booker said.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/cory-bookers-dramatic-violation-of-senate-rules-explained/ar-BBMXzq7?li=BBnb7Kz
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