House Democrats weigh legal options on Russia report, including Mueller subpoena, according to 3 lawmakers involved in the discussions.
of wrongdoing, has emboldened Trump and his GOP allies. Democrats, meanwhile, are demanding the full report and the underlying documents Mueller obtained during the course of his work — putting a potential Mueller subpoena on the table.
After Barr's summary was released Friday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told CNN in an interview that if the Department of Justice does not hand over the full report,"we will have to subpoena the evidence, we will have to subpoena Mueller or others to come before the Congress and answer questions."
Democrats say there is recent precedent for such testimony, pointing to then-FBI Director James Comey’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee in 2016, days after declining to prosecute former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over her private email server. In that case, lawmakers didn’t pursue a subpoena but bypassed Comey’s boss, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, to speak to Comey directly.Still, bringing Mueller before lawmakers could have its own limitations.
Justice Department officials have told NBC News they need time to scrub the report to remove classified information. Much of the evidence Mueller gathered came from grand jury testimony, which by law is protected from being publicly disclosed. Barr is also limited from releasing evidence that may still be used in prosecutions that have spun out from the Mueller probe.Democrats say they have a strong case for going directly to Mueller — specifically the Comey testimony in July 2016.
Democrats argue in this case that Barr, too, faces a conflict, pointing to a memo he wrote before his nomination as attorney general calling the Mueller investigation “fatally misconceived.” Presidents have faced allegations of obstruction of justice twice before in recent history — Bill Clinton in 1998 during the Monica Lewinsky investigation, and Richard Nixon in 1974 during Watergate. In both instances, special prosecutors in charge of the cases turned over evidence they had gathered to congressional impeachment inquiries. Although the Nixon special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, made his evidence available only to the Judiciary Committee.
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