Tuesday, June 4, 2019

Talks Between Democrats and Justice Dept. in Doubt Over Barr Contempt Vote

 
 
a group of people standing next to a person: Hope Hicks, the former White House communications director, was told by the White House not to comply with a congressional subpoena.© Doug Mills/The New York Times Hope Hicks, the former White House communications director, was told by the White House not to comply with a congressional subpoena.
WASHINGTON — House Democrats said on Tuesday that they were willing to renew negotiations with the Justice Department over access to the special counsel’s full report and investigative files, but rejected a call to pre-emptively cancel a House vote to hold Attorney General William P. Barr in contempt.
Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the Judiciary Committee chairman who issued a subpoena for the materials at the center of a simmering dispute, said he was ready to talk immediately to try to reach a compromise, but only “without conditions” preset by the Justice Department. The House has scheduled the contempt vote for next Tuesday after weeks of refusals by Mr. Barr and his department to comply with the subpoena.
“We urge you not to make the mistake of breaking off accommodations again,” Mr. Nadler wrote in a letter to Mr. Barr on Tuesday evening. “We are here and ready to negotiate as early as tomorrow morning.”
Mr. Nadler’s rejection of the department’s request left in doubt whether it would still be willing to engage in talks. Stephen E. Boyd, an assistant attorney general, wrote in a letter to lawmakers earlier Tuesday that the Trump administration was willing to negotiate only if the Judiciary Committee withdrew its recommendation to hold Mr. Barr in contempt and Democrats postponed the final vote.
“The department is prepared to resume negotiations with the committee regarding accommodation of its narrowed subpoena, provided the committee takes reasonable steps” to alleviate the threat of a contempt vote for the attorney general, Mr. Boyd had written. The Justice Department did not immediately comment on Mr. Nadler’s response.
If the vote proceeds, it would be only the second time in American history that Congress has held the nation’s top law enforcement official in contempt — a sign of the deep animus the special counsel’s investigation has engendered between the legislative and executive branches. In addition to holding Mr. Barr in contempt, Democrats were expected to vote to grant House committees the power to go straight to court in similar future disputes.
Jerrold Nadler et al. looking at a cell phone: “Federal law makes clear that the documents we requested — documents that left the White House months ago — are no longer covered by executive privilege, if they ever were,” Representative Jerrold Nadler, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said.© Erin Schaff/The New York Times “Federal law makes clear that the documents we requested — documents that left the White House months ago — are no longer covered by executive privilege, if they ever were,” Representative Jerrold Nadler, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said.
Negotiations between the two sides have been rived with mistrust for months, with both sides pointing fingers over the escalating tensions. Democrats are wary that the Justice Department’s latest offer could be merely a stalling tactic to try to at least delay the contempt vote rather than a good-faith step toward accommodation. And the department has maintained that Democrats are being unreasonable in the scope and speed of their demands.
With the contempt vote looming, Mr. Nadler had written the department on May 24 that the committee was willing to narrow and prioritize its request to “specific materials that if produced would be deemed to satisfy the subpoena,” including summaries of F.B.I. interviews with roughly 30 witnesses, as well as notes taken by key witnesses and White House documents cited in the report and related to possible obstruction of justice. He also said he would be willing to limit a demand over which lawmakers got to see a less redacted version of the report.
Mr. Boyd called the more limited request “more reasonable” and said it “could mitigate some of the legal barriers to disclosure” that the department had earlier objected to.
But even if talks do restart, the two sides appear to be far from a total thaw in hostilities over the Democrat-controlled House’s attempt to build a public case that the president obstructed justice in impeding the investigation into his presidential campaign’s contact with Russians.
To wit, the last-minute proposal from the Justice Department came only hours after the White House had instructed two more former aides to Mr. Trump not to cooperate with subpoenas from the Judiciary Committee, continuing a crippling blockade of nearly all oversight requests related to the special counsel’s investigation.
In a letter to Mr. Nadler, Pat A. Cipollone, the White House counsel, had said that the president’s chief of staff had informed the former aides — Hope Hicks, who served as the White House communications director, and Annie Donaldson, who was the chief of staff to Donald F. McGahn II, the former White House counsel — that they were not allowed to share the materials in question with Congress because they implicate “significant executive branch confidentiality interests and executive privilege.”
Instead, Mr. Cipollone instructed Congress again to come directly to the White House for any information previously turned over to the special counsel. But he suggested those conversations should be deferred pending the outcome of discussions between the Justice Department and the Judiciary Committee.
Mr. Nadler was furious, arguing that the White House’s claims that the material could be protected would not hold up in court.
“Federal law makes clear that the documents we requested — documents that left the White House months ago — are no longer covered by executive privilege, if they ever were,” Mr. Nadler said in a statement. “The president has no lawful basis for preventing these witnesses from complying with our request.”
Under subpoenas issued by the Judiciary Committee, the two witnesses had been instructed to deliver on Tuesday a range of documents related to their work in the White House, including notes and records related to some of Mr. Trump’s attempts to thwart federal investigators — attempts documented by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, in the report he completed in March.
Mr. Nadler said that Ms. Hicks, who also served as a top aide on Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, did produce some documents related to her work before the election. He called it a “show of good faith,” though a copy of a letter from Ms. Hicks’s lawyer obtained by The New York Times says she handed over only four documents containing email chains.
In addition to documents, the subpoenas call for Ms. Hicks and Ms. Donaldson to testify publicly this month — and there was no indication on Tuesday whether they would comply. Mr. Nadler made clear his position that both were still expected to show up before the panel. Ms. Hicks has been subpoenaed to appear on June 19 and Ms. Donaldson on June 24.
[Read the Judiciary Committee subpoenas for Ms. Hicks and Ms. Donaldson.]
But there appears to be little chance either former aide will testify, bolstering the case made by a growing number of House Democrats that the president is actively obstructing another branch of government from doing its constitutionally sanctioned oversight function, and that impeachment proceedings are the only proportional response.
The White House issued similar instructions not to cooperate last month to Mr. McGahn, who had served as one of the most important witnesses in Mr. Mueller’s investigation into obstruction of justice. He ultimately did not produce a single document or appear for a hearing. If it does not alter course for the Justice Department, the House is poised to hold Mr. McGahn in contempt of Congress next week, as well, and take the dispute to court to try to enforce its subpoena — steps that could soon follow for Ms. Hicks and Ms. Donaldson if they do not show up to the Judiciary Committee’s hearings.
With potential star witnesses off limits and Mr. Mueller reluctant to testify, Democrats have for now been left to try to figure out other ways to bring Mr. Mueller’s 448-page report to life. On Monday, Mr. Nadler announced that his committee would hold a series of hearingson the report with former federal prosecutors, legal experts and John W. Dean, who went to jail for his role in the Watergate affair.
Republicans, who remain closely aligned with the president, have repeatedly accused Democrats of being less interested in the truth than in manufacturing a conflict with the White House that could provide a pretext for impeachment. They painted the possibility of new talks between the two sides on Tuesday as further evidence Democrats had been acting irresponsibly.
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from London, and Katie Benner from Washington.
end quote from:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/talks-between-democrats-and-justice-dept-in-doubt-over-barr-contempt-vote/ar-AACnXI8
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