The following article by Ian Millhiser was posted on the ThinkProgress website September 5, 2018:
The charade begins.
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh began the second day of his confirmation hearing — and the first day where he did more than read from a prepared statement — by suggesting that Brett Kavanaugh was wrong to criticize a famous Supreme Court decision limiting presidential power.
In United States v. Nixon, a unanimous Supreme Court led by Nixon-appointed Chief Justice Warren Burger, held that President Richard Nixon must turn over taped recordings and other documented sought by Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski. Nixon resigned the presidency less than three weeks after this decision.
“To read the Art. II powers of the President as providing an absolute privilege as against a subpoena essential to enforcement of criminal statutes,” Burger warned, could “upset the constitutional balance of ‘a workable government’ and gravely impair the role of the courts.”