The Department of Justice is willing to take up House Judiciary Committee’s offer to reopen negotiations around Congress seeing the full special counsel report — but with one major condition.
In a letter to the committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) Tuesday, the Department said it would only do so if his committee reverses its vote recommending that Attorney General Bill Barr be held in contempt.
Barr is slated to face a contempt vote on the House floor next week.
The committee subpoenaed an unredacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, as well as its underlying materials, in April and, when Barr didn’t comply, held a committee contempt vote for Barr in early May.
Nadler, nonetheless, took another stab at getting the Justice Department back to the negotiating table with offers to limit the group of lawmakers with access to the materials and to limit what underlying materials they see. The Department in its letter Tuesday welcomed the narrowing of demands, but said it would only resume the negotiations if the committee “takes reasonable steps to restore the status quo ante mooting its May 8 vote and removing any threat of an imminent vote by the House of Representatives to hold the Attorney General in contempt.”
The letter pointed to the agreement the Justice Department came to with the Intelligence Committee, after Chairman Adam Schiff subpoenaed the report’s intelligence-related materials, to let the Department produce the requested materials on a rolling timeline.
Read the letter below:
Thanks, but no thanks.
Fool me once, your fault.
Fool me twice, my fault.
“We dont negotiate with redactionists”.
You see…they’re not so tough after all. This is about the 5th or 6th time that either Barr or DOJ has made reference to the Barr contempt resolution. He is bothered by it. Don’t be intimidated by his drunken sailor routine. He’s not that tough. Keep pushing.
Especially the contemptible ones…
The response to DOJ should be the shortest letter in the history of Congress. One word will suffice, although two would make the point a little more emphatically.