Sen. Merkley's lawsuit to compel release of Kavanaugh docs inches forward

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — A lawsuit filed by a Democratic senator from Oregon aiming to compel the Trump administration to release 100,000 pages of documents on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is inching forward in federal court, with an Obama nominee assigned to hear it.

Sen. Jeff Merkley's lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in the nation's capital, has been overshadowed by sexual harassment accusations against the nominee, but the case remains alive, with summonses prepared for U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and others, court documents show.

Ironically, in 2010, Sessions — then a senator from Alabama — was the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee when he and then-committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, jointly requested documents related to the nomination of Elena Kagan to be a Supreme Court justice.

In Merkley's lawsuit, Sessions is quoted as saying on the Senate floor that the public record of a nominee "is of such importance that we cannot go forward without these documents. I hope we will get those in a timely fashion. If not, I think we will have no choice but to ask for a delay in the beginning of the hearings."