Rep. Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wants the attorney general, William Barr, to break the law. That’s a curious, if not bizarre wish from a distinguished member of Congress. But Mr. Nadler and the Democrats, who are in a frenzy to salvage something from the
Mr. Barr pointed out to the chairman of the Judiciary committee that to comply with the demand would violate the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which govern how criminal cases are conducted in the courts. The attorney general and the Justice Department argue that they can’t turn over the full report to Congress because it includes information collected by grand juries, which is prohibited by law and long-held custom and practice. Grand jury testimony is secret. The Justice Department further argues that raw evidence collected in a criminal investigation must be protected from prying eyes, even congressional prying eyes. If Mr. Nadler and his colleagues think that’s not a good idea, they should work to change the law.
Protecting the secrecy of grand jury deliberations has been rarely questioned. Some of what a grand jury hears is little more than incriminating gossip, and the rules are meant to reassure witnesses and to protect the innocent. The rules grant wide privacy protections to grand jury proceedings. This is relevant because every page of the 400 pages of the Mueller Report is marked, “May Contain Material Protected Under Fed. R Crim. P. 6(e),” the law which protects secret grand jury proceedings, a Justice Department spokesman says, “and therefore could not be publicly released.”
To turn over the unredacted report, the attorney general argues, would violate these rules. The courts would appear to agree. In a decision last month, a U.S. court of appeals in Washington ruled that grand jury proceedings may be turned over to “prosecutors, defendants and other grand juries.” Nothing said about Congress.
If the House Judiciary Committee follows through on Mr. Nadler’s threat to cite the attorney general for contempt when it takes a vote on Wednesday, Mr. Barr would not be the first recent attorney general to be so cited. Eric Holder, the U.S. attorney general in Barack Obama’s first term, was cited for declining to release certain documents in a Justice Department scheme to sell weapons to Mexican drug dealers and then track the movement of the guns. One of those weapons was later used to murder an American border patrol agent.
[…]
See Also:
(1) Treasury Secretary Mnuchin denies House Dem’s request for Trump’s tax returns
(2) Turnabout: Barr deploys Holder defense to stymie Democrats in Congress
(3) The FBI’s Trump-Russia Investigation Was Formally Opened on False Pretenses
(5) Why Biden Leads the Democratic Field
Watch:
The normal five stages in dealing with an enormous loss, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance are a little out of sorts when it comes to the Democrats learning to live with the Mueller Report ‘nothing burger’. Steady as she goes…..denial yesterday. Anger today. Eventually they’ll move along but skip the bargaining stage and go straight to depression. Then they’ll skip over the acceptance stage (they will never/can never accept) and replace it with ‘call a suicide hotline’. But end up screaming insanely into their phones for being put on hold while they watch the U.S Marshall’s walking up their sidewalks whistling and twirling handcuffs.