WASHINGTON (CN) - The House Judiciary Committee will vote this week on subpoenas to acquire special counsel Robert Mueller's full report on his probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat who chairs the committee, had set an April 2 deadline for Attorney General William Barr to hand over the full report, without redactions, including the underlying evidence.
But Barr indicated Friday in a letter to Congress that he would transmit a redacted version of the report by mid-April - well after Nadler's deadline.
Describing help that he is receiving in this effort from the special counsel's office, Barr described four classes of information that he would scrub from the nearly 400-page report: material whose release could compromise "sensitive sources and methods," grand jury information and information that would hamper the privacy rights or reputations of so-called “peripheral third parties.”
Nadler repeated his call Monday for access to the full report.
"The full and complete report must be released to Congress without delay," Nadler said.
The committee will vote on Wednesday whether to authorize a subpoena.
In a 4-page letter on March 24, Barr informed Congress that Mueller's main findings did not establish conspiratorial links between the Trump campaign and the Russian effort to undermine Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, and offered no conclusion on whether the president obstructed the investigation.
Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein reached that conclusion themselves, however, and cleared the president of obstruction based on insufficient evidence.
In an op-ed published this morning in The New York Times, Nadler criticized Barr's decision to withhold the full report as “unprecedented."
It is up to the House Judiciary Committee - not the attorney general - to determine whether the president committed any wrongdoing, Nadler wrote.
Nadler said it is also up to Congress to determine whether the president obstructed justice.
On Friday Nadler suggested that Barr should work with him on a court order authorizing the release to the committee of grand jury information, as has occurred in past investigations.
Nadler said Monday the House Judiciary Committee will vote Wednesday on subpoenas to obtain documents from five former White House aides: former White House adviser Steven Bannon, former chief of staff Reince Priebus, former White House counsel Don McGahn - along with his former deputy Ann Donaldson - and former communications director Hope Hicks.
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
Additional Reads
-
San Francisco sues Oakland over plan to change airport name April 18, 2024 -
