House Intelligence Committee Democrats are willing to compel Special Counsel Robert Mueller to testify before their panel and sue the administration if that’s what it takes to make public Mueller’s report on his investigation into possible Russian involvement in the 2016 election.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff said Sunday that they were also willing to subpoena the report if Attorney General Bill Barr doesn’t sufficiently disclose its contents.
“We will obviously subpoena the report. We will bring Bob Mueller in to testify before Congress. We will take it to court if necessary,” Schiff told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “And in the end, I think the department understands they’re going to have to make this public.”
When asked whether he would take the administration to court, Schiff replied, “absolutely.”
“We are going to get to the bottom of this, we are going to share this information with the public, and if the President is serious about all of his claims of exoneration, then he should welcome the publication of this report,” he added.
The precise timing of when Mueller will present his report has been a moving target. A Justice Department official briefed on the plans told CNN Friday that Mueller’s report is not expected this coming week.
Barr has previously said that he wants to be as “transparent” as possible with Congress and the public, “consistent with the rules and the law.” He has also noted that the Justice Department often avoids airing “derogatory” information about uncharged individuals.
Schiff dismissed the department’s use of the policy Sunday, saying that he had told Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that the Department of Justice broke that standard with their investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, which brought no charges.
“The department has violated that policy repeatedly, and extendedly — to a great extent over the last two years,” Schiff said. “I have had this conversation with Rod Rosenstein and others on down at the Justice Department as they turned over thousands and thousands of pages of discovery in the Clinton e-mail investigation and there was no indictment in that investigation, that this was a new precedent they were setting and they were going to have to live by this precedent whether it was a Congress controlled by the Democrats or Republicans. ”
