Last updated on April 6th, 2019 at 03:56 pm
The House Judiciary Committee just completed a vote that authorized its chairman to use a subpoena to force the Justice Department to give Congress a full copy of Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s report and all of his underlying evidence.
BREAKING: The House Judiciary Committee votes to authorize a subpoena of the full Mueller report, setting up a clash between Congress and President Trump https://t.co/ppQmewO8pJ pic.twitter.com/y5fxkgyMq1
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) April 3, 2019
The committee chairman, Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, said he would not issue the subpoena right away, however.
The party-line vote won by Democrats who control the committee will increase the pressure on Attorney General William P. Barr as he decides how much of the Mueller report to share with Congress.
“I will give him time to change his mind,” Mr. Nadler said in his opening statement. “But if we cannot reach an accommodation, then we will have no choice but to issue subpoenas for these materials.”
The Judiciary Committee also gave its approval for subpoenas to five former White House employees. Democrats said these people were all relevant to their ongoing investigation into possible obstruction of justice, abuse of power and corruption within the Donald Trump administration.
The five employees are:
- Donald F. McGahn II, a former White House counsel;
- Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s former chief strategist;
- Hope Hicks, a former White House communications director;
- Reince Priebus, the president’s first chief of staff; and
- Annie Donaldson, a deputy of Mr. McGahn.
Barr wrote a letter to Rep. Nadler and other congressional leaders last week saying that he would give Congress a redacted version of the Mueller report by mid-April and would not share it with the White House before then.
Barr also said that Justice Department officials, working with the special counsel’s office, were “scrubbing” the Mueller report of four categories of information that must be redacted:
- classified material,
- secret grand jury testimony,
- details pertinent to ongoing law enforcement investigations and
- statements “that would unduly infringe on the personal privacy and reputational interests of peripheral third parties.”
Barr missed a House-imposed deadline of yesterday to turn over the nearly 400-page report.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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