T he US House of Representatives have voted to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress as a showdown over the Mueller probe continued. The move escalates the Democrats' extraordinary legal battle with the Trump administration over access to special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia report. The House Judiciary Committee voted along party lines, 24-16, to hold Mr Barr in contempt but only after some five hours of heated and, at times, emotional testimony. Democratic lawmakers put forward the contempt measure after Mr Barr did not comply with a legal order to release the findings of the report without the redactions. For the first time Mr Trump invoked the principle of executive privilege, claiming the right to block lawmakers from the full report on Mr Mueller's probe of Russian interference to help Mr Trump in the 2016 election. Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler declared the action by Mr Trump's Justice Department a clear new sign of the president's "blanket defiance" of Congress' constitutional rights. "Every day we learn of new efforts by this administration to stonewall Congress," Mr Nadler said. "This is unprecedented." But White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said it was rather a response to the "blatant abuse of power" by Mr Nadler, a Democrat. "Neither the White House nor attorney general Barr will comply with chairman Nadler's unlawful and reckless demands," she said. Though the White House initially hesitated on invoking privilege, Mr Trump told his staff and political advisers in recent weeks to refuse to co-operate with Democrats, believing the party's goal was simply to damage him politically going into his re-election campaign. The coming legal battle could stretch to 2020, and the White House is aiming to tie up congressional probes until election day. Executive privilege is the president's power to keep information from the courts, Congress and the public to protect the confidentiality of the Oval Office decision-making process. The White House has rejected all efforts to probe Mr Trump's business dealings or tax returns as well as the West Wing's security clearance procedure. The committee voted along party lines, 24-16, to hold Mr Barr in contempt but only after some five hours of heated and, at times, emotional testimony. Democrats, who have the majority in the House, made their case that Congress was at a historic juncture as it confronts what they consider Mr Trump's stonewalling of lawmakers' ability to conduct oversight of the administration. Republicans portrayed the majority as angry and lashing out at Mr Barr after the special counsel did not find that Mr Trump colluded with Russia to swing the 2016 election. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the next step after the committee vote will be consideration by the full House. If approved by the House, where the Democrats hold a solid majority, the contempt resolution would almost certainly move to an unusual, and potentially protracted, multi-pronged court battle with the Trump administration.<doc-sep>Tensions between the legislative and executive branch have been simmering for weeks, but they reached a boiling point Wednesday. House Democrats on the Judiciary Committee voted to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for failing to provide the full version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, and the White House responded by invoking executive privilege over it. The immediate consequences will be mostly symbolic. About 10 percent of the Mueller report was redacted, at times clearly because it involved information relevant to the upcoming trial of longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone. The next step in the proceedings will be a vote on the House floor. Although it will likely pass since Democrats control the chamber, Barr will probably face few legal repercussions, as federal prosecutors are unlikely to pursue criminal penalties for a contempt of Congress charge against their own boss. But the speed with which Democrats took the nearly unprecedented measure — it is only the second time in U.S. history that the nation’s top law enforcement officer was held in contempt of Congress — and the surrounding cloud of suspicion and counter-charges reflected the unprecedented scope of conflict between the executive and legislative branches. In the 48 hours since the Judiciary Committee announced it would hold contempt proceedings on Monday, the Trump Administration issued a flurry of rejections for congressional requests, adding to an already deep pile. On Monday, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin announced he would not turn over the President’s tax returns to the Ways and Means Committee; on Tuesday, the White House told former White House Counsel Don McGahn not to comply with a subpoena from the judiciary committee; and on Wednesday, after a day of futile negotiations between the committee and the Department of Justice, it invoked executive privilege over the redacted portions of the Mueller report. Democrats unsurprisingly used the high-profile proceedings on contempt to highlight what Nadler is deeming a constitutional crisis. As the markup stretched into the afternoon, the sentiments became less about Barr’s actions and more about about preserving the powers of the legislative branch. “This is unprecedented,” Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler said in his opening statement after listing all the other ways the White House has stonewalled Congress. “If allowed to go unchecked, this obstruction means the end of congressional oversight. As a co-equal branch of government, we should not and cannot allow this to continue.” Every member of the committee was allotted a brief time to speak, and the tenor reflected the partisan tensions. Democrats’ comments largely echoed Nadler’s about the state of U.S. democracy. Republicans, by comparison, defended Barr, arguing that Democrats were on a “witch hunt,” and wanted Barr to break the law by handing over the un-redacted report. Several also pointed out Democrats moved much more quickly to hold Barr in contempt than Republicans on the oversight committee did with his Democratic predecessor Eric Holder in 2012 when they were seeking documents in the Fast and Furious case. “[Democrats] have moved from request to contempt vote in only 43 days, and yet the Justice Department is still at the negotiating table — waiting for Democrats to arrive in good faith,” said ranking member Doug Collins, adding that Democrats want to “sully Bill Barr’s good name and reputation.” Department of Justice spokesperson Kerri Kupec released a statement after the vote, calling it “politically motivated,” and “unnecessary.” “It is deeply disappointing that elected representatives of the American people have chosen to engage in such inappropriate political theatrics,” she said. There is undoubtedly some irony that Barr is the first administration official facing contempt proceedings when his department, unlike the White House counsel’s office, actually came to the table to negotiate. And it is also true that the vote to hold Holder in contempt was, like Barr, upheld along party lines. But veterans of Congressional oversight say that, more than anything, it is this partisanship that is the problem. Tom Davis, a former Republican Congressman who previously chaired the oversight committee, said the increased polarization of Congress dates back to the Bush era, and is contributing to the ability of the executive branch to tighten its grip on oversight. “Congress doesn’t operate as an independent branch,” he said. “The President’s party is an appendage of the executive branch … it was not designed to work this way.” In an ideal world, said Davis, Republicans “would be standing behind the institution” — although he noted that Democrats did the exact same thing under Obama. “No one’s wearing a white hat here,” he said. There have been some instances of bipartisan cooperation in the House since the Democrats retook the gavel. Rep. Adam Schiff, who chairs the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has joined with ranking member Devin Nunes to request all materials from Mueller’s report. The two have twice sent joint letters to the Department of Justice, and, according to a committee aide, are prepared to start the subpoena process because there has been no compliance. But veterans of past fights between Congress and the executive branch don’t seem to hold out any hope that bipartisan cooperation from Congress will compel the Administration to cooperate. “It’s not not so much Republicans on one side and Democrats on the other,” said Kerry Kircher, who was House counsel for the Republican majority during the Obama Administration. “It’s that it is much more of a ‘you are getting nothing approach’ of responding to congressional oversight, as opposed to ‘you’re [going to] get something but we don’t think you should have more than what we’ve given you. '” Kircher said this level of resistance is very different from what he worked with during the Obama Administration. “Nobody [in the executive branch] likes [congressional oversight]. But heretofore everybody recognized it had its place,” he explained. “You mostly argued about degrees. It feels now we’re not arguing about degrees anymore. We’re arguing all or nothing … and that’s a significant escalation.” Get our Politics Newsletter. The headlines out of Washington never seem to slow. Subscribe to The D.C. Brief to make sense of what matters most.<doc-sep>The House Judiciary Committee voted on Wednesday to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over an unredacted copy of Robert Mueller's final report on Russian interference. Barr provided a partially redacted copy to the public and made multiple attempts to allow certain Democrats to view the report at the Justice Department, but they refused. If the contempt charges advance, Barr could face lofty fines or even jail time. The last attorney general to be held in contempt of Congress was Eric Holder in 2012 during the Obama administration, but the charges were ultimately tossed out. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee voted on Wednesday to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress, a severe penalty for refusing to comply with requests to hand over an unredacted copy of the special counsel Robert Mueller's final report in the Russia investigation and its underlying evidence. The 24-16 vote fell along party lines, as Democrats move forward with a multitude of sprawling inquiries into President Donald Trump and his administration. Contempt of Congress is a serious charge that can later result in a criminal referral to a US attorney. Though rare, if sought all the way through, maximum penalties could include either a $100,000 fine or one year in jail. Democrats took the first formal step toward holding Barr in contempt of Congress on Monday. On Tuesday, the Justice Department responded by threatening to advise President Donald Trump to invoke executive privilege over Mueller's report in light of Democrats' actions. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler responded by describing the Justice Department's threat as "without credibility, merit, or legal or factual basis." Read more: Being held in contempt of Congress is one of the most severe punishments on Capitol Hill. Here's what such a move could mean. The markup hearing lasted nearly seven hours, during which Republicans and Democrats went back and forth over the merits of holding Barr in contempt. Republicans such as Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, a former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, characterized the contempt effort as "a character assassination" and said there was opposition to obtaining an unredacted copy of the Mueller report because it would be leaked to the press within 48 hours. Democrats suggested it was about transparency and getting to the bottom of what has been a long and tumultuous investigation. While many Democrats said they were just trying to get to the truth, some continued to bring up the issue of impeaching President Donald Trump, something Democrats have been at odds with one another about for some time. "This committee, to ensure that we get that report because we have lawful responsibilities — constitutional responsibilities — to engage in. One of which is possibly impeachment," Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia said. "How can we impeach without getting the documents?" Barr released a partially redacted copy of Mueller's report in April, but Democrats were unsatisfied and demanded to view the report in full. Barr had initially offered to provide a copy with even fewer redactions for Democrats to view, but they declined. Tensions between Barr and congressional Democrats have been high for months, but they intensified in the weeks leading up to the release of the Mueller report. After Mueller turned in his final report in the Russia probe to Barr in March, the attorney general released a summary of his "principal conclusions" of Mueller's findings to Congress and the public before making the report available. In the summary, Barr said Mueller did not find sufficient evidence to bring a conspiracy charge against Trump or anyone on his campaign. Read more: Barr admitted he didn't look at the underlying evidence before concluding Trump didn't obstruct justice in the Russia probe Barr also said Mueller declined to make a "traditional prosecutorial judgment" on whether Trump obstructed justice. The attorney general went on to say prosecutors laid out evidence on "both sides" of the issue and did not come to a conclusion because of "difficult issues of law and fact concerning whether the President's actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction." But when the Justice Department finally released a redacted version of the report — which featured a road map of evidence against Trump and 11 potential instances of obstruction of justice — Barr drew immediate backlash for what Democrats said was an effort to shield the president by watering down Mueller's findings ahead of their release. Read more: The White House is blocking Don McGahn from cooperating with Congress about the Mueller probe Last week, Barr was set to appear before the House and Senate judiciary committees for back-to-back days of testimony about the Mueller report and his controversial decisions leading up to its release. Hours before he appeared before the Senate panel, it surfaced that Mueller wrote two letters expressing concerns to Barr about the way his findings had been portrayed by the attorney general. After testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the letters and his oversight of the Russia probe, the Justice Department announced Barr would not appear before the House Judiciary Committee the next day. The committee launched formal proceedings to hold him in contempt after he missed Monday's deadline to turn over the unredacted Mueller report and its underlying evidence. Read more: Over 370 former federal prosecutors say they would have charged Trump with obstruction if he wasn't president The last time Congress voted to hold an attorney general in contempt was in 2012, when Republicans were in the majority. Eric Holder, the attorney general at the time for the Obama administration, had repeatedly refused to hand over documents pertaining to the "Fast and Furious" Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives gun-walking scandal. Holder's contempt vote passed the House in bipartisan fashion, with a handful of Democrats joining Republicans to punish the top law-enforcement officer at the time. Ultimately, a federal judge tossed out the charges, and Holder avoided severe penalties. Other attempts to oust officials for not complying with Congress have taken different routes.<doc-sep>William Barr, the attorney general of the United States, now faces a likely contempt citation for failing to comply with a congressional subpoena and for misleading Congress. This is about the Mueller investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Isn't the investigation now complete? How did the attorney general's veracity become an issue and thereby extend the life of the investigation? Here is the backstory. When special counsel Robert Mueller completed his 448-page final report of his nearly two-year investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, the Trump campaign and its relationships to Russian agents, and the personal efforts of President Donald Trump to impede the investigation, he complied with the federal rules and delivered his report to the attorney general. Barr examined the report and decided to undertake two approaches to releasing it to Congress and to the public. JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: DID PRESIDENT TRUMP OBSTRUCT JUSTICE? The first approach was to summarize its principal conclusions and the second was to redact from public and congressional view materials that federal statutes and court rules prohibit him from making public. So, late on a Sunday afternoon in April, Barr authored a four-page summary of Mueller's conclusions, which related that Mueller and his team of FBI agents and prosecutors could not establish the existence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian agents for the campaign to receive something of value from the Russians. Barr offered the opinion that this conclusion exonerated Trump on the conspiracy -- what the media falsely called “collusion” -- charge. The second statement in Barr's four-page summary was that while Mueller found evidence of obstruction of justice by Trump personally, he left the decision of how to proceed with this evidence to Barr; Barr then concluded that the president would not be prosecuted. In the meantime, Barr and his team began to scrutinize in private every word in Mueller's report so as to reveal only what federal statutes and court rules permit to be revealed. While this process was going on, some folks on Mueller's team leaked to the media their displeasure with Barr's four-page letter because they felt it had sanitized the report and failed to capture the flavor, tone and gravity of the allegations it made against Trump personally. After media outlets published the story of this disenchantment, Mueller himself sent a letter to Barr essentially objecting to the same matters that some on his team had complained about to the media. While government officials often disagree with each other, this little spat over whether Barr's summary was faithful to Mueller's report became important because of the following seemingly innocuous event: When Barr was testifying before a House subcommittee about his budgetary requests for the Department of Justice in the next fiscal year, he was asked by a member of the subcommittee if he knew anything about any criticisms by members of Mueller's team about his four-page summary of Mueller's conclusions. He replied, "No, I don't." But of course, Barr did know because Mueller told him in his letter of the complaints his office had about the four-page letter. Did the attorney general deceive Congress? The Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee grilled the attorney general later on this, and he offered that a follow-up telephone call between himself and Mueller dissipated Mueller's written complaint. Yet, the fact that Mueller -- a seasoned government official -- wrote a letter about this knowing its near certain permanent residence in government files is telling. He made a permanent record of his complaint about Barr's sanitized letter, and Barr hid that record from Congress. At the same time that all of the above was transpiring, the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed the full unredacted Mueller report from Barr, and he dropped the ball again. Instead of challenging the subpoena before a federal judge and asking her to rule on the lawfulness of compliance, Barr ignored it. This produced calls for the House to hold him in contempt; a largely symbolic gesture, yet an unpleasant one for Barr. What's going on here? It is clear that Barr's four-page letter, about which Mueller complained to Barr and some of Mueller's team complained to the media, was a foolish attempt to sanitize the Mueller report. It was misleading, disingenuous and deceptive. Also, because Barr knew that all or nearly all of the Mueller report would soon enter the public domain, it was dumb and insulting. Barr knows the DOJ is not in the business of exonerating the people it investigates. Yet he proclaimed in his letter that Trump had been exonerated. When the report revealed 127 communications between Russian agents and Trump campaign officials in a 16-month period, and the expectations of those officials of the release of Hillary Clinton's hacked emails, that is hardly an exoneration. Was Barr's testimony before Congress deceptive? In a word: Yes. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP In a bit of bitter irony, the statute that the House Democrats now claim Barr violated is the same obstruction of justice statute that Mueller says the president violated -- engaging in deceptive or diversionary behavior for a corrupt purpose in order to impede a government investigation or inquiry. This is a gravely serious charge against the attorney general. Barr's prosecutors regularly prosecute defendants for doing what it now appears Barr has done. And the president last weekend added fuel to this fire by changing his mind on whether he will allow Mueller to testify publicly about his report. He now won't permit it. History teaches that these unpleasant events -- like Watergate and Whitewater -- can take on lives of their own, and can often have unintended consequences. But the lesson is always the same: It would be better for all of us if the whole truth comes out and comes out soon. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO<doc-sep>
U.S. Attorney General William Barr testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill on May 1. The House Judiciary Committee voted Wednesday to hold him in contempt of Congress, pushing the resolution to the full House. Nicholas Kamm Updated at 5 p.m. ET The House Judiciary Committee has voted to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress after the Trump administration invoked executive privilege over the contents of the Mueller report. The developments Wednesday escalated the confrontation between congressional Democrats and the White House over documents related to the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. "We are now in a constitutional crisis," said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., after the vote. The committee acted to hold Barr in contempt of Congress for refusing its demands to turn over an unredacted version of the report. The vote was 24-16 along party lines. The resolution now moves to the full House for a vote. As debate began on the contempt resolution, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd released a letter to Nadler, "to advise you that the President has asserted executive privilege over the entirety of the subpoenaed materials." The letter called it a "protective assertion" to ensure "the president's ability to make a final decision whether to assert privilege following a full review of these materials." A Justice Department spokesperson called the vote "politically motivated and unnecessary," asserting that the department could not comply with the subpoena for documents "without violating the law, court rules, and court orders." Separation of powers The dispute centers on congressional Democrats' demands to see the entire version of special counsel Robert Mueller's report into Russian interference in the 2016 election and is within a broader effort by the House to investigate Trump. A redacted version of Mueller's report has been made public, and a select group of lawmakers has been offered the chance to view a less redacted version. But Democrats want a wider circle of lawmakers, including all members of the Judiciary and intelligence committees, to be able see the complete report as well as the underlying evidence, including the investigative files that Mueller collected. A Justice Department letter sent Tuesday night said releasing that information "would force the department to risk violating court orders and rules in multiple ongoing prosecutions, as well as risk the disclosure of information that could compromise ongoing investigations." During the debate over the contempt citation of Barr, Nadler said the decision to invoke executive privilege was "a clear escalation in the Trump administration's blanket defiance of Congress' constitutionally mandated duties." White House press secretary Sarah Sanders tweeted that "Faced with Chairman Nadler's blatant abuse of power, and at the Attorney General's request, the President has no other option than to make a protective assertion of executive privilege." Sanders called it "sad that Chairman Nadler is only interested in pandering to the press and pleasing his radical left constituency." It's not clear how the Trump administration can argue that the contents of the Mueller report can be subject to executive privilege as the vast majority of it has already been made public and a published version is in fact a bestseller. Administration officials connected with the Russia story also have spoken to Congress in open hearings, including then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, intelligence community leaders and others. Nonetheless, Barr and the Justice Department now say that the privilege shields the material that Nadler wants, one day after the White House threatened to invoke it to block former White House counsel Don McGahn from turning over documents in answer to a committee subpoena. McGahn's attorney said on Tuesday that he would stand fast and do nothing — comply with neither the White House instructions nor the committee subpoena — until the legal questions surrounding the dispute have been resolved. If the House follows the Judiciary Committee in voting to hold Barr in contempt, that would send a criminal referral to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, whose boss is Barr. Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.