Cory Booker breaks Senate rules to disclose confidential documents for an ‘I am Spartacus’ moment

Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh is back at the Senate confirmation table Thursday for a third day as Cory Booker did some grandstanding for the Senate Judiciary Committee.

photo/ donkeyhotey

New Jersey Democrat Booker showcased a “racial profiling” document daring the forced exodus from the Senate, he knows there’s a “possible penalty of expulsion from the Senate.”

“I understand the penalty comes with potential ousting from the Senate,” Booker said in making clear he planned to break the rules. “I openly invite and accept the consequences of my team releasing that email right now.”

Later Booker made his motivations quite clear:

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, read the Senate rule about expulsion for disclosing secret or confidential business or proceedings of the chamber and its committees.

“Cory said this morning that he was releasing committee confidential documents, and that’s exactly what he’s done,” Booker spokeswoman Kristin Lynch said in an email to NPR.

“Last night, he was admonished by Republicans for breaking the rules when he read from committee confidential documents. Cory and Senate Democrats were able to shame the committee into agreeing to make last night’s documents publicly available, and Cory publicly released those documents as well as other committee confidential documents today. And he’ll keep releasing them because Republicans are hiding Brett Kavanaugh’s record from the American people.”

From the emails:

In a 2002 email, Kavanaugh writes that security procedures adopted in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks should ultimately be race-neutral, where he acknowledged that developing such procedures which take everything into consideration before implementing plans.

In a 2001 email, Kavanaugh addresses a legal challenge to an affirmative action program within the Department of Transportation.

Kavanaugh in 2003, questioned whether the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion should be described as “settled law of the land.”