The House Judiciary Committee voted along party lines on Wednesday to subpoena special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report and underlying evidence uncovered over the course of the two-year-long federal Russia investigation.
In a 24-17 vote, the committee, led by Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., also authorized itself to issue subpoenas for testimony and documents from former top White House officials, including Don McGahn, Steve Bannon, Hope Hicks, Reince Priebus, and Ann Donaldson, related to their preparation for testimony before the special counsel’s team.
Any privileges given to the Trump administration aides and their documents have been waived, according to Nadler.
“We are dealing now, not with the president’s private affairs, but with a sustained attack on the integrity of the republic by the president and his closest advisers. This committee requires the full report and the underlying materials because it is our job, not the attorney general’s, to determine whether or not President Trump has abused his office,” Nadler said during his opening statement.
“And we require the report because one day, one way or another, the country will move on from President Trump. We must make it harder for future presidents to behave this way. We need a full accounting of the President’s actions to do that work,” he added.
The panel’s decision comes after congressional Democrats set an April 2 deadline for Attorney General William Barr to turn over a complete, unredacted version of the Mueller report. Barr had pledged to give Congress an edited copy of the 400-page document by mid-April to avoid the disclosure of any sensitive information, but Democrats said that wasn’t good enough.
Ranking member Doug Collins, R-Ga., ripped Nadler and his Democratic colleagues for “picking the fight because fighting makes good headlines, and because his caucus is desperate for dirt on this president.” He additionally said many of the regulations governing the process surrounding the report were written by Democrats, such as Clinton administration-era Attorney General Janet Reno after independent counsel Ken Starr’s investigation into the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky scandals.
“Without facts on their side, Democrats have put all their hope in optics,” Collins said during his opening remarks. “There is no legislative purpose to these subpoenas, but there is a lesson. The chief and most fruitful charge of this committee is lawmaking, and no one waiting for immigration, criminal justice, or patent reform thinks it’s fair to see these issues neglected in exchange for subpoenaing Hope Hicks.”
Nadler, during heated exchanges with his Republican counterparts, indicated his willingness to take the dispute over access to Mueller’s findings to court if necessary. But he also said he would give Barr “time to change his mind” about not providing Congress the full report before issuing the subpoena or taking further legal action.
Mueller transmitted his long-awaited report on Russian interference in the 2016 election to the Justice Department in March. Barr’s four-page summary indicated there was no evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Trump and agents of Moscow. Although Mueller neglected to make a final determination about whether Trump obstructed justice, Barr said he concluded there was insufficient evidence.
