It’s rich that the Dems on Nadler’s Committee cry President
Trump is not above the law when the Special Persecutor could not find evidence
that there was collusion/conspiracy with Russia pertaining to Russia working
with the Trump campaign to win the 2016 Election.
AND YET these same Dems protected Obama and Crooked Hillary
in frequent cases of obstruction of by Obama’s Administration preventing
documents and/or mysteriously losing documents and electronic data by then
majority Republicans AND Crooked Hillary’s very public destruction of subpoenaed
evidence.
So when you hear Nadler and his fellow Dem ilk accuse
President Trump and Attorney General Barr of being above the law – WHEN NO LAWS
WERE BROKEN! – It is a demonstration of being involved in the Obama-cadre’s
coup against the President. Sounds like treason to me.
*******************
House panel votes to hold Barr in contempt, as Trump
asserts executive privilege over Mueller files
May 8, 2019 3:30 PM CT
Reaction from
national security analyst Bradley Moss and former deputy assistant attorney
general John Yoo.
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.
“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. As I indicated in my letter to you
last night, this protective assertion of executive privilege ensures the
President’s ability to make a final decision whether to assert privilege
following a full review of these materials.”
In a separate letter sent Tuesday, Boyd stressed
that Barr already has offered a select group of congressional Democrats
the opportunity to review a “minimally redacted” version of the report,
“excluding only grand jury information,” but Nadler and Democrats have refused
to “even review” the materials.
The vote to hold Barr in contempt escalates the
standoff between the Justice Department and congressional Democrats over
Mueller’s full report, and over Barr’s failure to appear for a scheduled
hearing before the committee last week after disagreements over the format of
the hearing. Democrats on the committee wanted to have their staff question
Barr. The Justice Department wanted only members to do the questioning. Barr
did not appear, and the committee held a meeting with an empty witness chair.
Democrats have blasted Barr for weeks over his handling of
the special counsel’s report. Barr initially released a four-page summary
of Mueller’s findings, announcing in late March that the special counsel found
no evidence of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and Russia
during the 2016 presidential election. Mueller did not come to a conclusion on
whether the president obstructed justice, but Barr said the evidence was not
sufficient to charge the president with such an offense.
While Democrats have criticized Barr for that swift
conclusion, they have sought the completely unredacted version of the
report in a bid to learn more about what information Mueller gathered regarding
the obstruction probe. The report released publicly last month had
redactions covering sensitive sources and methods, grand jury material, and
other areas to protect the reputational interests of “peripheral players” in
the investigation.
While Democrats have complained about the DOJ's redactions
in the publicly available report, however, Barr and his deputies have countered
that they've made available to select members a version with minimal redactions
-- and Democrats have declined to look at it.
“Unfortunately, the Committee has responded to our
accommodation efforts by escalating its unreasonable demands and scheduling a
committee vote to recommend that the Attorney General be held in contempt of
Congress,” Boyd wrote.
___________________________
Fox News' Alex Pappas and
Jake Gibson contributed to this report.
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