During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Ryan Bounds, the Oregon assistant U.S. attorney President Donald Trump nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, expressed regret for the “overheated” and “overbroad” rhetoric he used in opinion pieces he wrote while in college.

But at Wednesday morning’s hearing, Bounds pushed back against the contention by Oregon’s two Democratic U.S. senators—Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley—that he intentionally withheld his undergraduate writings from the bipartisan committee they formed to vet nominees.