Rep. Jerry Nadler wants the unredacted Mueller report, but without the Department of Justice’s conditions.
The New York Democrat, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, late Tuesday rejected an offer from the department to restart talks related to the committee’s request for the full report if Democrats agree to end their threats to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt.
The department had worked out a similar accommodation with the House Intelligence Committee in recent days.
A letter sent by Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd to Nadler Tuesday afternoon called the Judiciary Committee’s May 8 vote to recommend that the House of Representatives hold Barr in contempt “premature and unnecessary” and said that the department was disappointed by the committee’s “abrupt termination of ongoing negotiations aimed at reaching a reasonable accommodation.”
Boyd also indicated that the department was willing to resume negotiations with Democrats if they step away from contempt proceedings and threats by Democrats to have the entire House hold Barr in contempt next week.
But Nadler blamed the Justice Department for the “brinksmanship” on display and surmised that DOJ was only trying to cut a deal because of the looming contempt proceedings.
“I cannot help but wonder what role the imminent floor vote played in you finally responding on June 4 to letters that have been pending for weeks,” he wrote.
Nadler announced that the Judiciary Committee would subpoena the entire 448-page report as well as all underlying materials without any redactions on April 18, the same day a redacted version was released by Barr.
The committee’s subpoena demanded “all documents obtained and investigative materials created by the Special Counsel’s Office.” The recommendation to hold Barr in contempt came a couple of weeks later.
But on May 24, the Judiciary Committee seemed to shift its position when it wrote to the Justice Department about its “willingness to engage in further negotiations to resolve this dispute.”
In the letter to the committee today, Boyd told Nadler that “your letter comes well after the committee rejected good faith offers by the Department to accommodate the committee’s subpoena,” and he expressed disappointment that Democrats have reportedly scheduled a House contempt vote against Barr and former White House counsel Don McGahn on June 11.
But Boyd also said that Nadler’s May 24 letter “appears to recognize that the Subpoena is unworkably over broad and offers — for the first time — to narrow the subpoena’s scope to cover a much more limited set of documents.” And Boyd said that the Judiciary Committee’s “new offer reflects a more reasonable request and could mitigate some of the legal barriers to disclosure that we have discussed.”
Boyd said the department is prepared to resume negotiations with the committee so long as the committee takes reasonable steps to restore the status quo ante by mooting its May 8 vote and removing any threat of an imminent vote by the House of Representatives to hold the attorney general in contempt.
“It would hardly make sense for the full House of Representatives to act upon the committee’s prior recommendation to hold the Attorney General in contempt for not complying with a subpoena that even the Committee now appears to acknowledge was over broad in seeking immediate disclose of the entirety of the Special Counsel’s investigative files,” Boyd mused.
A footnote in Boyd’s letter indicated Democrats on the committee had acted in haste by recommending that Barr be held in contempt just 19 days after issuing their subpoena, pointing out that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee waited 252 days to hold then-Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt over Operation Fast and Furious and had waited 325 days to hold then-IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt.
“By any measure, the Committee rushed its decision and bears responsibility for the termination of the accommodation process,” Boyd said.
In an interview with CBS last week, Barr defended his decisions to redact certain portions of the Mueller report, even in the face of contempt votes from the House of Representatives, saying, “I would have to, as a matter of law, make sure that grand jury material was redacted because regardless of the political posturing that’s going on. It’s not lawful for me to just make that public.”
Nadler said Tuesday night that he was looking for DOJ to hand over much more than just grand jury material, asking for, among other things, FBI interview transcripts, called 302s, from Mueller’s investigation related to Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn, Jared Kushner, Andrew McCabe, Rod Rosenstein, Sally Yates, and more.
“We urge you not to make the mistake of breaking off accommodations again,” Nadler said. “We are here and ready to negotiate as early as tomorrow morning.”
