The Department of Justice made an eleventh-hour bid Tuesday to ward off House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s (D-CA) threat to smack Attorney General Bill Barr with a contempt recommendation — and it seems to have worked.
According to CNN, the DOJ’s offer to begin providing Schiff with counterintelligence information related to the Mueller report was enough to appease the chairman for now, as he cancelled Wednesday’s meeting during which he planned to take “enforcement action” against Barr for not fulfilling the subpoena.
“The Department of Justice has accepted our offer of a first step towards compliance with our subpoena, and this week will begin turning over to the Committee twelve categories of counterintelligence and foreign intelligence materials as part of an initial rolling production. That initial production should be completed by the end of next week,” Schiff said in a statement. “As a result of the Department’s acceptance, the business meeting has been postponed.”
He added that his subpoena is still active and will be enforced if the DOJ fails to provide all the documentation he wants.
Is Barr worried that a contempt citation would hurt him in court cases? Not sure why he cares.
I’m figuring all of the boo birds and second guessers will jump on this. It’s my understanding that negotiations are part of setting up litigation. So Schiff is just playing along. He did note that the contemp paperwork awaits should DOJ play games. Schiff seems to have a pretty good handle on things and has pushed back forcefully when required.
Man, he better be ready to move forward with maximum action if the DOJ and Barr so much as fart crosswise - by which I mean stall or fail to produce any of the expected documents. Anything else is just aiding and abetting the DOJ’s unconstitutional efforts to run out the clock.
Barr needs to worry that once Trump goes down, he will be a target of actual enforcement and post-DOJ legal action.
My worry is that Barr agreed to again start sharing the counterintelligence aspects of the Russia investigation because there is nothing much of value to share: that Mueller passed the counterintelligence ball back to the FBI and Wray or someone else made the decision simply not to follow up on anything. Kavanaugh all over again.