There’s been a major blow to those hoping to see Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s staff secretary files ahead of his confirmation hearings.

Today the Bush Library told us that at least 13,934 pages of the nominee’s files that we had hope to receive on an expedited basis are part of the cache specifically designated by President Bush as off limits to the public for the full 12 years allowed under the Presidential Records Act. (See letter at right.)

The Archives did grant our request to expedite our FOIA for other Kavanaugh files, although that would seem to mean little since initially the agency said it’d take 20 years for our request to be processed. (“Expedition” is relative.)

NARA also told us, as they told Sens. Chuck Grassley and Dianne Feinstein last week, that they expect to have 300,000 pages processed by Aug. 20, though they didn’t indicate when those pages – about one-third of what they expect to release, all from Kavanaugh’s time in the White House counsel’s office – would be available to the public.

Fix the Court expects that the next batch of files from our Kavanaugh FOIAs to be released on Monday.