Dems vote to hold Barr in contempt
Trump asserts executive privilege
– The House Judiciary Committee voted Wednesday to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt for refusing to turn over an unredacted version of the Russia report after an acrimonious session underscoring the country’s widening political divide.
The rare rebuke was approved in a party-line vote of 24-16 after 51⁄2 hours of debate.
The contempt citation for Barr is the first in a likely series of punitive actions the House is weighing against the Trump administration, which has sought to limit or deny lawmakers’ acWASHINGTON
cess to witnesses and documents.
The worst possible consequences for Barr – criminal prosecution, jail time and/or fines – aren’t likely because the Justice Department typically declines to pursue charges for contempt of Congress. Instead, the vote sends perhaps the most powerful message the Congress can muster in its oversight of the executive branch and is a prelude to filing a civil lawsuit for the full report and the underlying evidence that special counsel Robert Mueller collected.
Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said Barr made extraordinary efforts to provide Congress and the public details about Mueller’s report. “The attorney general could not comply with the House Judiciary Committee’s subpoena without violating the law, court rules and court orders,” Kupec said.
Minutes before Wednesday’s hearing, President Donald Trump asserted executive privilege in an attempt to further block Congress from parts of Mueller’s report that Barr redacted.
The clash between the executive and legislative branches sets in motion a constitutional showdown over how much information the Justice Department must provide to Congress. The Judiciary
Committee was the first to move to contempt proceedings among a variety of investigations that House committees launched against the president and his administration.
“There can be no higher stakes,” Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said after the vote. “We have talked for a long time about approaching a constitutional crisis. We are now in it.”
Before adopting the contempt resolution, the committee voted 20-12 to approve a Nadler amendment that rejected Trump’s claim of executive privilege to block access to the report.
The top Republican on the committee, Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, blasted the resolution as a continuation of the Democrats’ “war on the administration” through a “cynical, counterproductive” action.
In addition to voicing their support for Barr, Republicans attacked the language of the subpoena served on the attorney general because it covered grand jury information that is typically among the most protected material in the criminal justice system.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders repeated Trump’s assertion that Mueller and others should not have to testify before the House and the Mueller report should be the last work on the Russia investigation.
“This is over,” Sanders said. “I am 100% certain Jerry Nadler is not going to find something that Mueller couldn’t.”
The resolution heads to the full House for a vote. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told The Washington Post on Wednesday that Barr should be held in contempt.
Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., said Democrats remain in denial of the president’s election. “For two years now, there has been this nonstop (claim) that the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia,” Lesko said. “I believe this was done for headlines. This is good political theater, a political show. But are we getting things done? The answer is no.”
Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., accused Democrats of “weaponizing” their majority to take down the attorney general.
Justice Department officials met Tuesday with committee staffers to negotiate a possible resolution to the conflict, but the talks were unsuccessful.
“Unfortunately, rather than allowing negotiations to continue, Chairman Nadler short-circuited these efforts by proceeding with a politically motivated and unnecessary contempt vote,” Kupec said Wednesday.
Nadler said Barr’s failure to comply with a subpoena for the full report left no choice but to initiate contempt proceedings. “This obstruction would mean the end to government oversight,” he said, urging members to “stand up” to the administration.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, said the president intended to “take a wrecking ball to the Constitution of the United States.” She referred to a petition signed by hundreds of federal prosecutors who asserted that Mueller gathered sufficient evidence of obstruction by the president who sought to limit and derail the investigation. “The attorney general’s actions are contemptuous,” Jackson Lee said. “I happen to believe 700 former prosecutors.”
Republicans argued that the Justice Department made a reasonable offer to provide increased access to the Mueller report. Collins said that option was rejected because the committee’s leaders chose to move at “lightning speed” in pursuit of the contempt vote.