On Monday, the House Judiciary Committee made an announcement that they are considering a motion to the House Floor to hold Attorney General Will Barr in contempt of Congress. On Wednesday, the panel will vote on the resolution which states that Barr is unwilling to comply with a subpoena for Mueller’s unredacted report.
Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler announced the vote, “The Attorney General’s failure to comply with our subpoena, after extensive accommodation efforts, leaves us no choice but to initiate contempt proceedings in order to enforce the subpoena and access the full, unredacted report.”
Once AG Barr said that only a redacted version of the Mueller’s report would be released to Congress and to the public the subpoena came. Barr says the redactions are mainly to protect ongoing investigations and proprietary techniques of the Department of Justice.
Barr also explained that President Trump did not use his executive privilege to issue any redactions of his own. But the House Democrats still argue that the redacted report does not have enough detail to allow them to reach a conclusion about whether or not the president attempted to illegally obstruct the investigation.
The resolution reads: “Attorney General Barr failed to comply with the Committee’s request for these documents and thereby has hindered the Committee’s constitutional, oversight, and legislative functions.” It points out that the Judiciary Committee plans to investigate “alleged obstruction of justice, public corruption, and other abuses of power by President Donald Trump, his associates, and members of his Administration and related concerns.”
Nadler said he would stop efforts to hold Barr in contempt if the administration made sincere efforts to comply with the investigation by the House. The House Democrats insist that without the full report they are unable to provide “checks and balances” on President Trump and his administration.
The resolution states that Congress is “the only body able to hold the President to account for improper conduct in our tripartite system and urgently requires the subpoenaed material to determine whether and how to proceed with its constitutional duty to provide checks and balances on the President and Executive Branch. Otherwise, the President remains insulated from legal consequences and sits above the law.”
President Trump claims that their efforts to investigate the matter any further by making demands that Barr and Mueller testify and issuing subpoenas are partisan attempts to get a “redo” on the Russian collusion story to destroy the legitimacy of his presidency. He ridiculed the efforts of the House Democrats on Sunday.
In two tweets, the President wrote, “After spending more than $35,000,000 over a two year period, interviewing 500 people, using 18 Trump Hating Angry Democrats & 49 FBI Agents – all culminating in a more than 400 page Report showing NO COLLUSION – why would the Democrats in Congress now need Robert Mueller to testify. Are they looking for a redo because they hated seeing the strong NO COLLUSION conclusion? There was no crime, except on the other side (incredibly not covered in the Report), and NO OBSTRUCTION. Bob Mueller should not testify. No redos for the Dems!”
