Under the leadership of Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the House Judiciary Committee approved subpoenas Wednesday for special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report. Democrats and their mainstream media allies are trying to pressure the Justice Department to release the document without redactions.
That’s illegal, say experts. Further, Attorney General William Barr is working closely with Mueller and his team to present the findings as quickly as possible to Congress and the public.
Schiff doesn’t seem to care, critics say. He’s more interested in headlines than in the truth — but one Wall Street Journal editor and New York Times bestseller called him out on Tuesday.
Kimberley Strassel went on Twitter to call Schiff’s political stunts “irresponsible” and illegal, and said that he and his political allies should know better.
Schiff and his allies voted 24-17 to give Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., permission to issue subpoenas to the Justice Department for the final report, its exhibits and any underlying evidence or materials prepared for Mueller’s investigation.
However, Nadler has not yet said if he’ll send the subpoenas.
House Democrats voted Wednesday after they’d given Barr just days to provide the full report to Congress — an impossible timeline by even the most intense standards.
The Justice Department ignored that deadline, with Barr telling committee chairmen in a letter last week that the almost 400-page report would be released as soon as possible — by mid-April, “if not sooner.”
Democrats have said they will not accept redactions and want to see the evidence unfiltered by Barr.
Strassel said it’s a dangerous game Democrats are playing — and they know it.
2)What Schiff & Co. don't mention is this case is to do with a grand jury "report." Under the law, grand juries "may" choose to produce a report for the court. These reports are highly procedurally regulated.
— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) April 2, 2019
4) Each person named is also given 30 days to respond to any allegation in the report, before it can be filed as public record, or subject to a subpoena. These reports are often written to become public, as they bear on some investigation into gov employee misconduct.
— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) April 2, 2019
6) None of this bears remotest relation to what Dems are demanding from Barr. They want raw grand jury testimony/evidence, including that related to criminal inquiries into elected officials.
— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) April 2, 2019
It is universes apart. And our public officials ought to be expected to be a little bit more honest about history, and their unprecedented demand to see secret grand jury proceedings
— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) April 2, 2019
In the letter last week, Barr said he is scrubbing the report to avoid disclosing any grand jury information or classified material, in addition to portions of the report that pertain to ongoing investigations or that “would unduly infringe on the personal privacy and reputational interests of peripheral third parties.”
Democrats don’t seem to care what’s legal, and are demanding access to all of that information.
“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.
The Judiciary panel also voted Wednesday to authorize subpoenas related to five of President Donald Trump’s former top advisers, including strategist Steve Bannon, communications director Hope Hicks, chief of staff Reince Priebus, White House counsel Donald McGahn and counsel Ann Donaldson. Donaldson served as McGahn’s chief of staff before both left the administration.
The top Republican on the Judiciary panel, Rep. Doug Collins, D-G.A. said at the vote that the five subpoenas are misguided because two of the individuals have already provided 3,000 documents to the committee and that the other three have indicated a willingness to cooperate.
Collins said the authorization for subpoenas is “reckless” and that Democrats know they shouldn’t be asking for documents that the Justice Department can’t legally disclose. The committee rejected a GOP amendment that would have blocked the subpoenas from applying to grand jury information.
“We have a pre-emptive chairman who has gone out with pre-emptive subpoenas today on a report that has already been promised him,” Collins said. “This is nothing but political theater.”
In other words, Schiff and his Democratic allies are lying to the public.
They’re misusing the Judiciary Committee to push unwarranted threats onto people that are already cooperating with them.
And they’re doing it all to gain cheap political points.
In a four-page summary of Mueller’s report on March 24, Barr wrote that the special counsel did not find that Trump’s campaign “conspired or coordinated” with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election.
Barr himself went further than Mueller in his summary letter, declaring that Mueller’s evidence was insufficient to prove in court that Trump had committed obstruction of justice to hamper the probe.
The Associated Press contributed to this article