
A key House committee with the power to impeach President Donald Trump is moving ahead with a Thursday hearing to question Attorney General William Barr about the Mueller report, even if the attorney general doesn’t show.
The standoff took its latest turn Monday when the Judiciary Committee formally announced plans to hold a Wednesday morning vote that would authorize the panel’s Democratic and GOP counsels to split an hour of additional questioning about the special counsel’s findings on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
DOJ officials have objected to committee staff asking Barr questions in public about the Mueller report, setting the stage for an explosive hearing that Democrats say they’ll conclude by issuing a subpoena for the attorney general’s testimony should he fail to appear.
“The witness is not going to tell the committee how to conduct its hearing, period,” Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) told CNN on Sunday.
DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said that Barr was the one who volunteered to testify before Congress about the Mueller report. “Therefore, Members of Congress should be the ones doing the questioning,” she said. “He remains happy to engage with Members on their questions regarding the Mueller report.”
Thursday’s House hearing is one of two scheduled appearances Barr has this week on Capitol Hill.
The GOP-led Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning gets the first opportunity to question the attorney general, a session that will include its own share of theatrics with three Democrats running for the White House – Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris – serving on the panel.
The 2020 hopefuls will be sharing the stage with Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), an outspoken Trump ally who drew criticism on Sunday when he said he doesn’t care if the president told then-White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller during the early stages of the Russia probe – one of a dozen potential obstruction of justice crimes involving the president that the special counsel’s prosecutors examined.
Mueller’s redacted findings released earlier this month included reams of evidence about the president’s efforts to thwart or end the Mueller investigation, even as the special counsel also concluded there was no finding of a criminal conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and the Russians to influence the 2016 election.
So far, Democratic leaders have pumped the brakes on using the Mueller report as grounds to formally launch impeachment proceedings, though they continue to press for more evidence and information from the special counsel’s investigators.
A Judiciary Committee subpoena already issued to DOJ demands access by Wednesday to the unredacted Mueller report, as well as its underlying grand jury evidence and testimony.
Trump on Monday also added to the partisan tension by praising Barr for his handling of the Mueller probe. “Bob Mueller was a great HERO to the Radical Left Democrats,” the president posted on Twitter. “Now that the Mueller Report is finished, with a finding of NO COLLUSION & NO OBSTRUCTION (based on a review of Report by our highly respected A.G.), the Dems are going around saying, “Bob who, sorry, don’t know the man.””
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine