By Alexandra Hutzler
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President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh said during Senate testimony Wednesday that United States v. Nixon is one of the "greatest moments in Supreme Court history" but then immediately refused to affirm that a sitting president is required by law to answer a subpoena.
Kavanaugh was in the hot seat as the Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearing entered the questioning portion of the proceedings. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein interrogated Kavanaugh, aiming a series of questions at the judge about his views on presidential power.
"Can a sitting president be required to respond to a subpoena?" Feinstein asked Kavanaugh toward the end of her 30-minutes of questioning.
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Kavanaugh hesitated to answer the question directly. He called it a "hypothetical" situation and said therefore it would be inappropriate to offer a response.
"So that's a hypothetical question about what would be an elaboration or a difference from *U.S. v. Nixon'*s precise holding," Kavanaugh offered. "I can't give you an answer on that hypothetical question."
"So you can't give me an answer on whether a president has to respond to a subpoena from a court of law?" Feinstein immediately fired back.
"My understanding is that you're asking me to give my view on a potential hypothetical and that's something that each of the eight justices currently sitting on the Supreme Court when they were sitting in my seat declined to decide potential hypothetical cases," Kavanaugh said.
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The exchange came immediately after Kavanaugh had repeatedly praised the Supreme Court case United States v. Nixon, in which the high court unanimously agreed that Richard Nixon must obey a subpoena and produce the tapes and documents from Watergate. Nixon shortly resigned after the release of the tapes.
In the thousands of documents that Kavanaugh turned over to the committee before the hearing was a 1999 roundtable discussion during which Kavanaugh questioned if the Supreme Court had "wrongly decided" on United States v. Nixon.
"That was a huge step with implications to this day that most people do not appreciate sufficiently.... Maybe the tension of the time led to an erroneous decision," Kavanaugh had said at the time, according to a report by the Associated Press*.*
The exchange came as Democrats are looking to grill Kavanaugh about presidential power, amid concerns over the fate of Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation with a conservative-leaning Supreme Court bench.
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