Patrick Leahy: “When we review the documents volunteered by the White House, obviously, we are going to be asking, Is this more of the…”

“When we review the documents volunteered by the White House, obviously, we are going to be asking, Is this more of the old trick of flooding us with stacks of really unimportant materials in order to divert attention from those that matter the most? I hope the White House will begin to work with us instead of acting unilaterally. There is one very easy way. They could send up documents that make no sense. They could say, Here is 400 pages of something he had on his desk every day when he was working as a political appointee of the Justice Department, and send us the telephone book. That is 400 pages. It was on his desk. It is not very helpful. So the bottom line is this: The White House is eager to supply documents it selected and certainly provided with great fanfare, but we have yet to receive the documents we have, in fact, requested. It is an unfortunate pattern we have seen too often. Of course, the White House has available to it all the documents. The President has spoken about the designee's work in the Reagan White House and at the Bush Justice Department. But they have yet to share those materials with the Senate. Other nominations have run into trouble when this White House has decided to let the Senate see only what the White House wants the Senate to see.…”