House committee readies contempt vote against Barr

[May 08, 2019]  By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House Judiciary Committee prepared to move forward on Wednesday with a contempt citation against Attorney General William Barr for defying a congressional subpoena demanding access to the full, unredacted Mueller report.

In the latest escalation of a battle between Democrats and Republican President Donald Trump, the panel was set to meet at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) and vote on a resolution recommending that the full House of Representatives find Barr in contempt of Congress. Committee staff and Justice Department officials worked behind the scenes in hopes of a deal to avert the proceedings.

"Still scheduled," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler told reporters when asked if the committee vote would go forward as planned, following talks with Justice Department officials that made little headway on Tuesday.

Barr released a redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on his 22-month investigation into Russian election meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Nadler subpoenaed the full document and underlying evidence, saying the material is necessary for lawmakers to determine whether Trump obstructed justice by trying to upend the Mueller probe. Barr missed two subpoena deadlines for turning over the material, the latest on Monday.

"We remain unanimously determined on our side of the aisle to get the unredacted report, as we've demanded," Representative Jamie Raskin, a Democrat on Nadler's committee, told reporters.

The redacted Mueller report details extensive contacts between Trump's 2016 campaign and Moscow, but did not find there was a conspiracy between Moscow and the campaign. The report also describes actions Trump took to try to impede Mueller's investigation.

The fight over the full report is just one battle in a growing struggle between Trump and the Democrats probing him, his business interests and his administration that seems to be headed inexorably for the courts, presenting political risks for both sides headed into the 2020 presidential and congressional elections.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr testifies before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on "The Justice Department's investigation of Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election" on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 1, 2019. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne/File Photo

On Tuesday, the Trump administration stymied a separate effort by House Judiciary Committee Democrats to subpoena records from former White House counsel Don McGahn, directing him not to provide the documents sought by the panel.

McGahn was a star witness in Mueller's Russian investigation, as well as Trump's subsequent attempts to impede the probe.

Mueller's report said McGahn told investigators that Trump unsuccessfully pressured him to remove Mueller and then asked him to deny that Trump had done so. The accounts are based partly on the documents sought by House Democrats.

The Trump administration has refused to cooperate with congressional probes in at least a half-dozen instances, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's decision on Monday to deny a request for Trump's tax returns from the Democratic chairman of the House tax committee.

But in a rare show of bipartisanship, Democrats and Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee pressed the Justice Department and the FBI, in an April 25 letter, to turn over an unredacted copy of the Mueller report and "all classified and unclassified" evidence relating to foreign spying or counterintelligence.

Congressional officials circulated copies of the letter on Tuesday. One official said the panel would soon begin a "compulsory" process to obtain the material unless there was more cooperation from the Justice Department.

(Reporting by David Morgan; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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