The House Judiciary Committee is voting to hold Attorney General William Barr Bill BarrWatchdog group suing for Trump obstruction memo blasts DOJ for trying to block release Biden DOJ to appeal court order to release Trump obstruction memo CNN reporter's phone and email records secretly obtained by Trump administration: report MORE in contempt of Congress and to secure a vote of the entire House of Representatives in order to send the matter to federal court. The problem is that the contempt action against Barr is long on action and short on contempt. Indeed, with a superficial charge, the House could seriously undermine its credibility in the ongoing conflicts with the White House. Congress is right on a number of complaints against the White House, including possible cases of contempt, but this is not one of them. As someone who has represented the House of Representatives, my concern is that this one violates a legal version of the Hippocratic oath to “first do no harm.” This could do great harm, not to Barr, but to the House. It is the weakest possible case to bring against the administration, and likely to be an example of a bad case making bad law for the House. House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler Jerrold (Jerry) Lewis NadlerMcGahn to testify next week before closed-door House panel over longtime subpoena fight McGahn to sit for closed-door interview with House Democrats House to consider anti-Asian hate crimes bill, protections for pregnant workers this month MORE laid out the case for contempt. He raised three often repeated complaints against Barr in that he failed to release an unredacted report by special counsel Robert Mueller Robert (Bob) MuellerSenate Democrats urge Garland not to fight court order to release Trump obstruction memo Why a special counsel is guaranteed if Biden chooses Yates, Cuomo or Jones as AG Barr taps attorney investigating Russia probe origins as special counsel MORE, allegedly lied twice to Congress, and refused to appear before the committee. Yet, notably, the only claim the committee seeks to put before a federal court is the redaction of the report. That seems rather curious since, if Barr lied or refused a subpoena as House leaders claim, it normally would be an easy case of contempt. The reason for this move is that House Democrats know both claims would not withstand even a cursory judicial review. False statements Democrats have struggled to focus attention on the summary Barr wrote rather than on the actual report. While Democrats claim the summary misrepresented the report, the report tracks the conclusions referenced in the letter Barr sent. Barr said Mueller did not find evidence of a crime linked to collusion or conspiracy with the Russians. That is true. He said Mueller did not reach a conclusion on obstruction. That is also true. ADVERTISEMENT Barr said he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded the evidence, particularly on the lack of a clear showing of corrupt intent here, did not support an obstruction charge. That is again true. Barr then added the most damaging line of the report, stating Mueller expressly did not exonerate Trump. Barr also gave Mueller an opportunity to review his letter, but Mueller chose to decline. However, his letter was not false. Democrats also have cited the exchange between Barr and Congressman Charlie Crist over a story about some “concerns” the letter raised among the members of the special counsel team. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Nancy PelosiGOP leaders face new calls to boot Greene Biden, Bass press for police reform after meeting Floyd family Kinzinger calls for Greene to be removed from GOP conference after Holocaust remark MORE declared what Barr said was a “lie” and a “crime.” One would assume that Barr would then be referred for prosecution and subject to an immediate impeachment. At a minimum, it would seem such an allegation would be in the contempt sanction. The problem is that what Barr said was true. Crist noted unspecified news reports that members of the special counsel team are “frustrated at some level with the limited information” in the letter Barr sent and “that it does not adequately or accurately, necessarily, portray” the findings. Crist asked if Barr knew what they were referencing. Barr said no and said, “I suspect that they probably wanted more put out.” He added, “But in my view, I was not interested in putting out summaries or trying to summarize because I think any summary, regardless of who prepares it, not only runs the risk of, you know, being underinclusive or overinclusive, but also, you know, would trigger a lot of discussion and analysis that really should await everything coming out all at once.” Barr was being questioned about news reports citing unnamed members of the special counsel team and their being “frustrated” by the portrayal of the “findings.” He said he did not know but added that he assumed they “wanted more put out” and he rejected the idea of releasing additional summaries. That is true. The only thing Barr did not mention was the letter that Mueller sent to him, which had not been public at that point. Failure to appear Various Democrats have declared that Barr refusing to appear before the committee is clear contempt of Congress. It is a point endlessly raised by House members on television but conspicuously missing in the contempt sanction. The reason is that it is not true. Barr appeared before the Senate and answered detailed questions from members. He was prepared to do the same in the House when the committee inexplicably demanded that he be questioned not just by members but also by professional staffers. Democrats have tried to explain that the demand for questioning was due to the “complexity” of the record and issues of the special counsel report. That rationale is facially absurd. There is nothing overly complex about these issues, as shown in the Senate hearing. The committee wanted Barr examined by staff lawyers, including Norm Eisen, who handled ethics questions for President Obama. Eisen had declared months ago that the criminal case for collusion was devastating and that Trump was “colluding in plain sight,” a position expressly rejected by Mueller. The Democrats wanted to manufacture a conflict, and they have succeeded in doing so. Report redactions That leaves us with the only ground cited by the Democrats for contempt, which is Barr refusing to release the unredacted report. Senate Democrats attacked him at his at his confirmation hearing for refusing to guarantee public release of the report without redactions. As a witness, I testified that they were asking Barr to commit to a potential criminal act to secure his own confirmation. The report inevitably would contain some grand jury material, which under the law is information that cannot be publicly released without a court order. It is a crime to unveil such information. Barr promised to release as much of the report as possible, and he has delivered. Indeed, he is not expressly given the authority to release the confidential report. Yet, he not only released it but declared executive privilege waived on its content. The key obstruction portion of the report is virtually unredacted. Just 8 percent of the public report was redacted, largely to remove material that could undermine ongoing investigations. The sealed version of the report given to Congress only had 2 percent redacted. Democrats are therefore seeking a contempt sanction on a report that is 98 percent disclosed and only lacks grand jury material. Barr restricted access to the 98 percent disclosed report, as opposed to the 92 percent public report, due to the inclusion of evidence impacting ongoing prosecutions. He has offered to expand the number of members and staff to review that material but insists on it remaining protected. But this has nothing to do with the redactions. It is the 2 percent solution to a major political dilemma of the left. Faced with a report that rejected the collusion theories of their running narrative, Democrats want to focus on those 2 percent of redactions rather than over 400 pages of findings.<doc-sep>WASHINGTON – 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 approved by a party-line vote of 24-16 after five and a half hours of debate triggered a new escalation of tensions between the Trump administration and House Democrats pressing for a deeper examination of the president and his outside business empire. The contempt citation for Barr is the first in a likely series of punitive actions the House is weighing against the administration, which has sought to limit or deny lawmakers’ access to witnesses and documents. The worst possible consequences for Barr – criminal prosecution, jail time and/or fines – aren't likely at all 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 and without threatening the independence of the department’s prosecutorial functions," Kupec said. Minutes before Wednesday’s hearing, President Donald Trump took the extraordinary action of asserting 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. Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., accused the Justice Department of moving forward with a “clear escalation” of differences with the House by asserting executive privilege over the documents sought by the committee. He called the department’s action an "unprecedented obstruction by the administration which has now vowed to block all attempts at government oversight.” “There can be no higher stakes,” Nadler 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. Nadler said the privilege assertion is “not a valid claim … because executive privilege has been broadly waived in this case as a matter of law and fact.” 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. The committee adopted by voice vote an amendment from Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., that clarified that grand jury information won't be subject to the subpoena unless a federal court approves the release of the information. Collins argued that the amendment made the resolution incompatible with the subpoena. What is contempt? :What is that and can it actually be used? How often does contempt happen? :Rarely 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 word 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 for refusing to release the complete Mueller report to Congress. Disputes about contempt vote Throughout the debate, Democrats attacked the administration’s claim of privilege to block access to Mueller’s report. “This is not about executive privilege, this is about burying the evidence,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif. “Are you kidding me? You can’t assert executive privilege after the fact,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., noting that Sanders and former White House counsel Don McGahn talked to Mueller. Republicans accused Democrats of staging political theater rather than pursuing serious government oversight. 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. Negotiations for settlement collapsed 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, which he refused to postpone to allow additional time to explore discussion and compromise," 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.” Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., said the panel’s contempt action was warranted by Barr’s defiance of the committee’s subpoena. “Somebody said we were afraid,” Cohen said. “Yes, we’re afraid. We’re afraid of the loss of the rule of law.” 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 a contempt vote against the attorney general. “Our democracy deserves better,” Collins said. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said the Democrats’ demand for the unredacted report effectively would require the attorney general to “break the law” by releasing protected grand jury information elicited by Mueller’s investigators. “There is a character assassination squad running around this town,” Sensenbrenner said. Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, said the panel’s leadership was seeking to “destroy” the attorney general. “Our Democrats are really ticked off by the conclusions of the Mueller report because it found that the allegations of collusion were a big fat zero,” Chabot said. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, launched a rapid-fire repudiation of the Democratic leadership and criticism of the FBI’s handling of the Russia investigation. “Bill Barr was following the law. What’s his reward? They are holding him in contempt,” Jordan said. Impeachment mentioned in debate Lawmakers from both parties said the contempt proceeding and the pursuit of more information about the Mueller report could lead to impeaching Trump, even though Pelosi and Nadler have downplayed that option. Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., said Barr’s refusal to turn over the full report is part of “a cover-up.” “We must get this document,” he said, to decide whether to pursue impeachment. “The American people expect us to get it.” Gaetz said Wednesday’s debate had “nothing to do with Bill Barr.” “This is all about impeaching the president,” Gaetz said. Constitutional fight brewed for weeks The Judiciary Committee fight has been brewing for weeks, since Mueller submitted his 448-page report to Barr on March 22. Barr defended his handling of the report during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week.<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. Please enter a valid email address. * The request timed out and you did not successfully sign up. Please attempt to sign up again. Sign Up Now An unexpected error has occurred with your sign up. Please try again later. Check the box if you do not wish to receive promotional offers via email from TIME. You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Thank you! For your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder. Write to Alana Abramson at Alana.Abramson@time.com.<doc-sep>
The House Judiciary Committee voted Wednesday to recommend holding Attorney General Bill Barr in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s unredacted Russia report and underlying documents, after President Trump asserted executive privilege in a bid to protect those files from release. Both developments represented a major escalation in the already-tense fight between the two branches of government over access to information the Justice Department says cannot be legally released. The committee's 24-16 vote on contempt for Barr was along party lines and came after hours of debate. House leaders will now decide whether to take up the contempt citation on the House floor for a final vote. If approved, the measure would be referred to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia -- who could choose not to act. House Democrats could also pursue a lawsuit. “We did not relish doing this, but we have no choice,” Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said after the vote, adding, "We’ve talked for a long time about approaching a constitutional crisis. We are now in it." A Justice Department spokeswoman, in a statement, accused Nadler of “inappropriate political theatrics” instead of working out a deal over Barr’s testimony. “Unfortunately, rather than allowing negotiations to continue, Chairman Nadler short-circuited these efforts by proceeding with a politically motivated and unnecessary contempt vote, which he refused to postpone to allow additional time to explore discussion and compromise,” spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said. Earlier, Nadler said the president’s move to invoke executive privilege shows the administration does not respect congressional oversight. IMPRISONING BILL BARR IS LEFT'S NEW RALLYING CRY: 'HAVE HIM LOCKED UP' “By invoking executive privilege on all of our materials that are subject to subpoena, the process has come to a screeching halt,” Nadler said. “The administration has announced loud and clear that it does not recognize Congress as a co-equal branch of government with independent constitutional oversight authority and it will continue to wage its campaign of obstruction.” Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the committee, fired back at committee Democrats and called Wednesday's vote a "cynical, mean-spirited, counterproductive and irresponsible step." "Democrats are angry the special counsel’s report did not produce the material or conclusions they expected to pave their path to impeaching the president. I feel compelled to remind everyone the report found that, despite offers to do so, no one from the Trump campaign knowingly conspired with the Russian government," Collins said. "... They are angry our nation’s chief law enforcement officer and his deputy had the audacity to decide the evidence didn’t support charges for obstructing an investigation into something the president didn’t do." The president’s decision to invoke privilege came after the Justice Department, late Tuesday night, requested that the House Judiciary Committee postpone the scheduled vote to hold Barr in contempt. The Justice Department warned that if the committee did not postpone, the attorney general would recommend that Trump claim executive privilege over the materials. On Wednesday, the White House did just that. "The Attorney General has been transparent and accommodating throughout this process, including by releasing the no-collusion, no-conspiracy, no-obstruction Mueller Report to the public and offering to testify before the Committee. These attempts to work with the Committee have been flatly rejected. They didn’t like the results of the report, and now they want a redo," Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement on Wednesday. "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.” Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd sent a letter to Nadler on Wednesday morning saying the same. “We are disappointed that you have rejected the Department of Justice’s request to delay the vote of the Committee on the Judiciary on a contempt finding against the Attorney General this morning,” Boyd wrote, adding that the committee has “terminated our ongoing negotiations and abandoned the accommodation process” related to the subpoena. “Unfortunately, rather than allowing negotiations to continue, you scheduled an unnecessary contempt vote, which you refused to postpone to allow additional time for compromise,” Boyd wrote. “Accordingly, this is to advise you that the President has asserted executive privilege over the entirety of the subpoenaed materials.