House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler is making what he calls a final “counter offer” to Attorney General William Barr’s refusal to grant immediate access to the underlying evidence in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
“The committee is prepared to make every realistic effort to reach an accommodation with the department,” Nadler wrote in a new letter to Barr on Friday. “But if the department persists in its baseless refusal to comply with a validly issued subpoena, the committee will move to contempt proceedings and seek further legal recourse.
”Nadler is giving the Justice Department until 9 a.m. Monday to comply with his adjusted request before moving forward with an effort to hold Barr in contempt of Congress for defying a committee subpoena demanding Mueller’s entire report and underlying documents by May 1, a committee aide said.
Democrats have said they’re trying to show that they’re engaging in good-faith negotiations with Barr before rushing to take punitive actions — like holding him in contempt or fighting Barr in court.
“[T]he department has offered no reason whatsoever for failing to produce the evidence underlying the report, except for a complaint that there is too much of it and a vague assertion about the sensitivity of law enforcement files,” Nadler wrote.
As part of his new offer, Nadler is asking the Justice Department to allow more members of Congress to immediately view a less-redacted version of Mueller’s report. The chairman is also asking Barr to join Congress to seek a court order granting lawmakers access to grand-jury material that Barr has blocked from public view.
And Nadler says he’s willing to prioritize Mueller’s underlying evidence in order to streamline its production to Congress, with a focus on materials that were specifically mentioned in the redacted version of the report.
Nadler’s new offer comes as the Justice Department said earlier this week it would not comply with Nadler’s subpoena for the unredacted Mueller report and all of the underlying evidence and grand-jury information. In a letter to Nadler, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd said Congress is not entitled to the information, adding that the request is “not legitimate oversight.”
The committee is conducting its own obstruction of justice investigation into President Donald Trump, and Democrats have demanded that they have access to all of Mueller’s evidence so that they could use it for their own probe.
The Justice Department has offered for a select number of lawmakers and staffers to view a less-redacted version of Mueller’s report. Nadler has objected to those restrictions.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine