Mueller Report Distracts as House Digs for FBI Records

WASHINGTON (CN) - Partisan jabs and arguments over socialism dominated a House hearing Tuesday that was otherwise meant to open up documents in the FBI probe of President Donald Trump.

Broadly speaking, the House Judiciary Committee had been scheduled this morning to mark up a resolution covering any communications by former FBI Director Andrew McCabe about a counterintelligence or obstruction-of-justice investigation steered at Trump. 

Even as they sent the resolution to the House floor 22-0, however, Democrats appeared more focused on the report submitted Friday by special counsel Robert Mueller to the Department of Justice.

“There is no doubt that we need the report, and we need of course the documents that go with it and the documents and the documents and the documents,” said Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas. 

With the report still under seal, lawmakers thus far have had to make do with the 3-page summary submitted to Congress on Sunday by Attorney General Robert Barr.

Representative Henry Johnson, D-Ga., dismissed that summary Tuesday as “a real disservice to truth and justice in this nation.”

Though Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington noted that she is encouraged by the push for transparency by Republicans, Representative. Steve Cohen from Tennessee said he found recent GOP comments “abominable and scary.”

The comment came after Republican Representative Mo Brooks read Adolph Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” into the House record to make a point about how Democrats and the “the Media” supposedly use the same socialist and propaganda tactics as used by Nazis. 

“I know where most of the anti-Semites end up politically,” Cohen said, “and they’re not on our side.” 

Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., brought the single amendment to the resolution up for debate Tuesday.

Adding a middle initial to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's name as it appears in the resolution, the modification passed with bipartisan support.

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