House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler has scheduled a vote to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress, after Barr’s Justice Department refused to hand over an unredacted copy of the Mueller report.
Nadler (D-New York) scheduled the vote for Wednesday, after Barr failed to comply with a subpoena to turn over an unredacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report to the Judiciary Committee by Monday. In a resolution filed Monday morning, Nadler recommends that Barr be found guilty of contempt of Congress.
The Justice Department has called Nadler’s subpoena “overbroad and extraordinarily burdensome.” Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, the ranking Republican on the committee, said Nadler’s resolution was “illogical and disingenuous.”
According to Barr, redactions were made to the Mueller report for four reasons: to avoid harming ongoing criminal cases; to avoid revealing investigative techniques; to protest the privacy of peripheral third-party individuals; and to protect grand jury testimony, a requirement by law.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team assisted Barr with the redactions.
Since the release of the redacted report last month, Nadler has emerged as one of the loudest voices clamoring for a full, unredacted copy. Although the report found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016, Nadler and a cohort of Democrats have pinned their hopes on the unredacted report revealing some evidence of wrongdoing, possibly to kickstart impeachment proceedings against the president.
“Some of this would be impeachable,” Nadler told NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ last month. “Obstruction of justice, if proven, would be impeachable.”
The committee’s 24 Democrats and 17 Republicans will vote on the contempt resolution on Wednesday. If successful, it will then go before the full, Democrat-controlled House.
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