HIGH COURT ASKED TO BLOCK SECRETS FROM MUELLER’S GRAND JURY

WASHINGTON» The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to block Congress from seeing grand jury secrets gathered in the Russia investigation by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, saying the executive branch would suffer irreparable harm if lawmakers see the evidence.

In a 35-page filing, Noel Francisco, the solicitor general, asked the justices to halt an order by a federal appeals court that imposed a May 11 deadline on the Justice Department to turn over the evidence to the House Judiciary Committee. He said the Justice Department should first get a chance to fully litigate an appeal of the ruling before the Supreme Court.

House Democrats have argued that they need to see the grand jury evidence in part because of suspicions that President Donald Trump may have lied under oath in his written answers to Mueller.

But under Attorney General William Barr, the Justice Department has fought to prevent House investigators from seeing the grand jury material, including information that was blacked out in the report on the Mueller investigation it released last year.

Usually, Congress has no right to view grand jury evidence. But in 1974, the courts permitted lawmakers to see such materials as they weighed whether to impeach President Richard Nixon. Last summer, as the House Judiciary Committee weighed whether to impeach Trump, it sought a judicial order to see certain grand jury materials, too.