Kavanaugh Receives Highest Rating from American Bar Association

President Donald Trump’s U.S. Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, received the highest possible rating on his credentials by the American Bar Association (ABA) on Friday.

“The American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary has completed its evaluation of the professional qualifications of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh,” the ABA said in a letter sent to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

LifeZette obtained a copy of the letter.

“After an exhaustive evaluation process, the Standing Committee has determined by a unanimous vote that Judge Kavanaugh is ‘Well Qualified’ for the position of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court,” the letter continued.

The ABA standing committee bases its rating system for judicial nominees on being well-qualified, qualified or not qualified. Kavanaugh’s being well-qualified means he received a substantial majority of the vote.

The ABA released his rating in a list that included other pending nominees Trump has put forward. Kavanaugh received the same well-qualified rating when President George W. Bush nominated him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2006.

Related: Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s Supreme Court Pick: Everything You Must Know

Trump nominated Kavanaugh to the nation’s highest court July 9, and the judiciary panel opens its confirmation hearing on the nomination September 4. The judge has faced a particularly tough confirmation process since he would give the highest court a solid conservative majority.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has been at the forefront of the opposition campaign with his calls to delay a confirmation vote.

Schumer has been encouraging Democratic colleagues not to meet with Kavanaugh until he releases an estimated 1 million documents from his time working for Bush in the White House prior to his first judicial nomination. Kavanaugh was a senior associate counsel and assistant in the Bush White House.

Despite Schumer’s opposition, some Democrats have met with Kavanaugh. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) was the first, meeting with Kavanaugh July 30. Schumer also met with Kavanaugh, but then said he wasn’t happy with Kavanaugh’s answers to questions the Democratic leader asked during their closed-door conversation.

Schumer also threatened August 16 to sue the National Archives for the unreleased White House records. The issue is that many of the documents are covered by executive privilege, and the former administration is currently in the process of vetting them.

Schumer and other Senate Democrats have also argued that the recent legal troubles for Trump associates are also a reason to delay the Kavanaugh confirmation process as well.

The ABA rating might cause Schumer to rethink his position if his own past statements mean anything. The Washington Post first reported in 2001 Schumer’s reference to the ABA ratings as the gold standard by which judicial candidates should be judged. He has repeated the line often over the years.

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Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and other Republicans see the Democrats’ document demands as nothing more than an attempt to delay the nomination process until after the midterm elections in November. If Democrats are able to flip enough seats to regain a Senate majority, they would then potentially be in a position to block the nomination.

Grassley claimed during a judicial committee meeting August 16 that Kavanaugh submitted the most robust bipartisan committee questionnaire ever, at roughly 17,000 pages. Approximately 250,000 documents from the White House period have already been turned over to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Schumer was among numerous Democrats who opposed the Kavanaugh nomination even before it was announced. He has argued that delaying the nomination until after the midterms would be appropriate considering what happened to Judge Merrick Garland in 2016.

Former President Barack Obama nominated Garland to fill the seat once held by the late Justice Antonin Scalia toward the end of Obama’s term in 2016. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell claimed voters should have the opportunity to select the next president before the vacancy was filled, so he delayed the vote. Trump then nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch, whom the Senate confirmed.

A Quinnipiac University poll found that 44 percent of voters support Kavanaugh’s nomination, while 39 percent oppose him. The survey was conducted from August 9 to 13.