Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., pushed President Trump to do more that tweet his frustration at the Justice Department after it failed to comply with a subpoena deadline and hand over 1.2 million documents related to three investigations last week.
“President Trump picked every one of these decision makers, every one of them, he picked,” Gowdy said in a Sunday morning interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
“I appreciate the tweets, the encouraging tweets to these folks. But there might be a more efficient way of communicating,” he added.
Trump on Saturday tweeted that his Justice Department was “slow walking” after missing the deadline on Thursday set by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.
Goodlatte sent the subpoena to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein more than two weeks ago, after the agency failed to respond to a request for the documents from Goodlatte and Gowdy, the chairman of House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, issued four months earlier. The documents they seek relate to the agency’s investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server, potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the firing of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe last month.
The DOJ has said it will turn over 1,000 pages of information on Monday, but Gowdy says the agency has to do better than “a thousand pages here and there.”
Gowdy explained Congress has some options to help force the release of the documents, including public testimony and power of the purse. Gowdy said that of the million-plus documents in the possession of the inspector general, they don’t need the grand jury material “we’re not entitled to,” only what’s left, in unredacted form.
“Or,” he added, “Or the person who actually hired [Attorney General] Jeff Sessions, actually hired [FBI Director] Chris Wray, actually hired Rod Rosenstein, and who, by the way, also controls the executive branch, might want to communicate to them that he is displeased.”
Rep. Mark Meadows, a top conservative from North Carolina, said Saturday there is a “growing consensus” among his colleagues to use the contempt of Congress statute amid frustration with the Justice Department. He also suggested that Rosenstein could face impeachment if DOJ continues to defy congressional demands.
