House panel authorizes subpoena for full Mueller report

[struggle4progress]

Bart Jansen, USA TODAY
Published 10:26 a.m. ET April 3, 2019
Updated 12:45 p.m. ET April 3, 2019

WASHINGTON – The House Judiciary Committee voted Wednesday to authorize a subpoena for special counsel Robert Mueller’s full report and the evidence his investigators gathered, setting up what could be a historic legal clash with the Justice Department.

The panel also voted to authorize subpoenas for evidence from some of President Donald Trump’s former top advisers, including strategist Steve Bannon, communications director Hope Hicks, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, White House counsel Donald McGahn and counsel Ann Donaldson.

The committee did not issue the subpoena immediately. Instead, the vote gave Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., the authority to do so in the future, the first step by Congress to force Attorney General William Barr to release Mueller’s entire confidential report about Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The committee approved the subpoena by a party-line vote of 24-17 ...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/04/03/mueller-report-house-panel-authorizes-subpoena-full-report-ag-barr/3333346002/

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1. What you'll actually see

By RENAE REINTS 12:04 PM EDT

... “As I have made clear, Congress requires the full and complete Special Counsel report, without redactions, as well as access to the underlying evidence,” committee chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) said in a statement Monday.

He encouraged Barr to release the unredacted report to Congress “so that we can work together to ensure the maximum transparency of this important report to both Congress and the American people.”

Whether or not lawmakers will see the full report, the public will only be able to read what’s left after the redactions. According to Barr’s March 29 letter to Congress, there are four categories of information that must not be made public: grand jury matters, compromising intelligence, ongoing investigations, and the privacy and reputation of third parties ...

http://fortune.com/2019/04/03/house-vote-to-release-mueller-report/

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2. What else could Mueller's report reveal?

April 3, 20195:00 AM ET
PHILIP EWING

... Trump's campaign and business had many contacts with Russians from 2015 through the 2016 election — these are not in dispute and they were among the reasons for the investigation in the first place ...

The degree to which Mueller's full report specifically addresses the material in the dossier could be one of its most important developments for the politics of the post-Mueller era ...

... one claim of the dossier was that powerful Russians may possess compromising material — or so-called kompromat — about Trump and that may have been why he took such sympathetic tone toward Moscow — for fear of it being revealed ...

Trump, as his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen told the House oversight committee, often speaks in a "code." Mueller's report may reveal how much the Justice Department's decision not to prosecute on obstruction depended on the substance of his actions and how much on his use of that "code" ...

https://www.npr.org/2019/04/03/708793177/what-else-could-robert-muellers-report-reveal-about-trump-and-russia

[spooky3]

3. GOOD!!! nt

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4. How quickly his tune changed!

BY BESS LEVIN
APRIL 2, 2019

On March 25, shortly after Attorney General William Barr told Congress that the Mueller report “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” Donald Trump was asked if he wanted to see the special counsel’s report “completely released,” to which he responded: “Up the attorney general, but it wouldn’t bother me at all . . . Wouldn’t bother me at all.” Four days later, he maintained that position, saying he would have no problem letting Congress, and then the public, see the full monty. “I have nothing to hide . . . absolutely nothing to hide,” he told reporters. Yet .. after a week of taking victory laps about “No Collusion,” “No Obstruction,” and “Complete and Total EXONERATION” (fact-check: false), the president appears to be changing his view ...

On Monday, he tweeted, “No matter what information is given to the crazed Democrats from the No Collusion Mueller Report, it will never be good enough.” Then on Tuesday, the president told his followers that “NOTHING WILL EVER SATISFY THEM,” adding: “It is now time to focus exclusively on properly running our great Country,” emphasis ours. Later, speaking to reporters, President Let the People See It described calls to release the full report as “somewhat of a waste of time” and “a disgrace” ...

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/04/trump-having-second-thoughts-about-people-seeing-the-mueller-report?verso=true

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5. Privacy group says DOJ agreed to 'expedite' release

BY JACQUELINE THOMSEN - 04/03/19 11:45 AM EDT

A privacy group that filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice (DOJ) to obtain special counsel Robert Mueller’s report says the agency has agreed to “expedite” their request.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said in a post late Tuesday that the DOJ agreed to the accelerated schedule after the group sued for the documents last month under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A portion of an email sent by a DOJ official to EPIC and viewed by The Hill also showed that the department had agreed to an expedited release of the report ...

https://thehill.com/regulation/national-security/437146-privacy-group-says-doj-agreed-to-expedite-release-of-mueller

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6. No longer enthusiastic about releasing report

By Jonathan Chait

... It’s possible Trump is just so committed to a wide-ranging view of executive privilege he will insist on withholding a report that humiliates his critics and disproves all the unfounded suspicions the Fake News has raised about his relations with Russia. Or possibly he’s concerned Congress will waste precious time reading a long, boring report whose conclusion we’ve already been told, when it should be getting urgently to work on his ambitious legislative agenda of … um … <tumbleweed rolls by> ...

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/trump-no-longer-enthusiastic-about-releasing-mueller-report.html

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7. Fight for report could get ugly fast

By Timothy L. O'Brien
April 3, 2019, 12:58 PM EDT

... This could play out quickly — or very, very slowly — depending on how aggressive Nadler decides to be and how Attorney General William Barr responds. Barr has promised to turn over a redacted version of the report by mid-April; Democrats worry that waiting that long gives Barr too much time and latitude to decide what should and shouldn’t be disclosed.

If Barr insists on more time, and Nadler unleashes his subpoena, Barr may still resist, setting up a legal battle that could find its way to the Supreme Court.

The White House itself has other cards to play as well, including asserting that some parts of the Mueller report pertain to the presidency’s internal processes and deliberations and are therefore protected by executive privilege and are, presto, subpoena-proof ...

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-03/mueller-report-subpoena-congress-vs-justice-department

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8. The people who've seen the report are those we trust least

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
APR 3, 2019

... the longer the report stays the exclusive property of this particular Executive Branch, the less I am going to trust what eventually emerges from the "vetting" process. This is now starting to carry the aroma of those transcripts released by the Nixon White House that permanently lodged the phrase "Expletive Deleted" in the history of American politics. And even those carried enough evidence of the ethical petrified forest that was the Nixon White House that their release did that president more harm than good ...

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a27031095/jerry-nadler-mueller-report-william-barr-donald-trump/

[Beringia]

9. Great