On the eve of the public release of the Mueller report, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., announced that his committee wants to call special counsel Robert Mueller and members of his team to testify.
“I assume we’ll probably find it useful to ask Mueller to testify and I assume members of his team to testify,” Nadler said, “but we’ll have to make those decisions after reading what we get, as inadequate as that may be.”
During the Wednesday evening press conference, Nadler also said it was likely subpoenas would be issued in short order, especially if the report is heavily redacted.
Nadler also ripped Attorney General William Barr, saying Barr has taken actions “on behalf of President Trump” that are “unprecedented.”
“The attorney general appears to be waging a media campaign on behalf of President Trump, the very subject of the investigation at the heart of the Mueller report,” said Nadler. “Rather than letting the facts of the report speak for themselves, the attorney general has taken unprecedented steps to spin Mueller’s nearly two-year investigation.”
[Related: Democrats question Barr’s ‘independence,’ demand full Mueller report]
Nadler also listed four areas that have him unhappy with Barr: the “cherry-picked” findings of Barr’s four-page summary of Mueller’s investigation to Congress; the witholding of special counsel summaries that “were intended for public consumption”; that Congress will receive a copy of the report only after Barr’s 9:30 a.m. press conference; and a report out Wednesday that Justice Department officials spoke about the findings of the report to White House lawyers before its public release.
The White House is reportedly preparing a counter-report to rebut potentially damaging claims.
The New York Democrat accused Barr of trying to spin Mueller’s findings.
“The central concern here is that Attorney General Barr is not allowing the facts of the Mueller report to speak for themselves but is trying to bake in the narrative about the report to the benefit of the White House,” Nadler said.
Nadler has previously said that he and his committee would not decide on issuing subpoenas until after he has had a chance to read a redacted version of Mueller’s report. The report is expected to be released sometime after Thursday’s 9:30 a.m. press conference. Congress will reportedly be receiving copies of the 400-page report sometime after 11 a.m.
Barr had previously released a four-page summary of Mueller’s findings that said Trump did not collude with Russia during the 2016 presidential election. Mueller offered no determination one way or the other on whether the president obstructed justice, although Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein concluded that he had not.
