Schumer: Kavanaugh hearing should be delayed after Cohen plea deal

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Wednesday said the Senate Judiciary Committee should delay its confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in the wake of former President Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s guilty plea.  

“It’s a game changer. It should be. … In my view, the Senate Judiciary Committee should immediately pause the consideration of the Kavanaugh nomination,” Schumer said from the Senate floor.  

He added that he thought Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, had scheduled Kavanaugh’s hearing “too soon” and he believed it should be delayed. 

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Kavanaugh’s hearing is scheduled to begin Sept. 4. Republicans have given no indication they are open to delaying the hearing. 

But Democrats are demanding that it be delayed after Cohen pleaded guilty to charges of bank fraud, tax fraud and campaign finance law violations.

Lanny Davis, Cohen’s lawyer and an opinion contributor for The Hill, has said that Cohen’s decision implicates the president in wrongdoing.

“Very clearly, there is no dispute that Donald Trump committed a crime,” he told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”. “No dispute, because his own lawyers said to the special counsel in a letter that he directed, that’s the word they used, Michael Cohen to make these payments.”

Democrats have raised concerns that Kavanaugh has a broad view on executive authority and would try to protect Trump from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. 

Schumer told reporters on Tuesday that Kavanaugh would not say in their meeting if he believed a president could be subpoenaed. 

He added on Wednesday that his answer combined with Cohen’s plea makes Kavanaugh’s nomination a “danger.” 

“At the very least, the very least, it is unseemly for the president of the United States to be picking a Supreme Court justice who could soon be effectively a juror in a case involving the president himself,” Schumer said. 

Several Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, which Schumer is not a member of, have also called for Kavanaugh’s hearings to be delayed.