The Brett Kavanaugh files: Help explore documents around the most recent Supreme Court Nomination

With troves of more documents about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh being released on a regular basis, we wanted to make it easier for everyone to explore some of the primary source materials behind the Senate process using our new crowdsourcing tool.

We’re uploading documents released by the National Archives, the George W. Bush Presidential Library, and the Senate regarding the nominee. You can browse them here on DocumentCloud, and start helping read through and categorizing them here:

Explore the Brett Kavanaugh files

You can help go through thousands of pages covering Brett Kavanaugh’s time working under special counsel Ken Starr, in the White House Counsel’s Office under President George W. Bush, and more, summarizing and highlighting the documents you think are most interesting.

Already, people have been diving through the documents looking for interesting, informative, or just odd.

One set of emails, for example, included racist jokes …

Among the new Kavanaugh docs senators got today is an email chain planning a weekend trip. One person (NOT clear who, Kavanaugh or someone else) jokes:

"Although you may be hoping that I've lined up a hostess for a rub-n-tug massage session, 'Su Ching' actually is the sailboat."
— Elana Schor (@eschor) September 6, 2018

and reminiscing about a weekend getaway:

Lookit mr Supremes ova hea likes his dice and diet coke eyyyy #Kavanaugh https://t.co/fYNit1Fh7u pic.twitter.com/siLEHR2Pmu
— oval office ghost 👻👻 (@HongPong) September 7, 2018

Fix the Court, which is also currently suing the Justice Department for more documents, has also been parsing some judicial philosophy issues, surfacing Kavanaugh downplaying American Bar Association ratings during prior confirmation battles:

NEW KAVANAUGH DOCUMENT: "I would not give excessive credence to the ABA rating" (425690) https://t.co/2iGe0PxqRq pic.twitter.com/LqQlufKy5T
— Fix the Court (@FixTheCourt) September 5, 2018

Some documents, however, are just odd: