The Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee voted Wednesday, 24 Dems to 16 Republicans, to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for not giving the committee special counsel Robert Mueller’s full, unredacted report.
The committee, led by Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY), gave the Attorney General a deadline of 9 a.m. Monday to turn in the full report with no redactions which is against the law. Further, Republicans believe the sensitive material could be leaked.
Rep. Nadler scheduled the congressional contempt vote on Wednesday and all Democrats that were present voted to hold William Barr in contempt of Congress in the contempt resolution. The measure will move to the full House for a vote later this month.
As soon as Nadler’s circus show started, President Trump asserted executive privilege over the full, unredacted report.
Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) blasted House Democrats Wednesday, in his counter debate, after the Committee voted at the beginning of the meeting to hold Attorney General Bill Barr in contempt.
“Bill Barr’s following the law, and what’s his reward?” Jordan asked. “Democrats are gonna hold him in contempt.” Jordan suggested that Democrats want to “destroy” Barr because they are worried that he might investigate how the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election began. (Continued Below)
“Democrats are nervous he’s gonna get to the bottom of everything. He’s gonna find out how and why this investigation started in the first place” Jordan warned.
Jordan pointed to the Attorney General’s testimony in front of the Senate Appropriations Committee last month where the attorney general said that he believed “spying did occur” on Trump’s 2016 campaign and that the Justice Department would investigate it.
Jordan explained that Barr said 4 important things during his testimony: First, there was a failure of leadership at the upper echelon of the FBI. Second, the Attorney General said that spying did occur. Third, Barr said that there is a basis for his concern about the spying that took place. Forth, Jordan described as the most interesting, “Barr said, in his judgment, that he thinks there may have been unauthorized surveillance and political surveillance.” (Continued Below)
Then, Jordan brought up when Sen. Chuck Schumer said of President Trump on MSNBC with Rachel Maddow, “If you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”
“I don’t know if the FBI went after President Trump in six ways, but I sure know they went after him in two ways, and the first one is the now famous dossier,” Jordan explained.
The Ohio Congressman clarified, “On October 21, 2016, the FBI used one party’s opposition research document as the basis to go to a secret court to get a warrant to spy on the other party’s campaign. That happened. Democratic National Committee, the Clinton campaign, paid Perkin Coie law firm, who hired Fusion GPS, who then hired a foreigner, Christopher Steele who talked to Russians and put together what? This salacious, unverified document that became the basis to get a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign.”
Jordan pointed out that when they went to the FISA court, they didn’t tell the court who paid for it, or that Christopher Steele was “desperate to stop Trump.” They also didn’t tell the court that Steele was fired by the FBI for leaking to the media.
Jordan listed the second way and mentioned The New York Times report that reveals that the FBI sent an investigator posing as an assistant to meet with George Papadopolous.
“You know what they call that? It’s called spying! They did it. They did it twice and who knows how much more and what I know is Bill Barr said he is going to the bottom of it. And think about the term he used: political surveillance,” Jordan said. “Think about that term.” (Continued Below)
Last month, Barr announced that he was reviewing the origins of the Russia investigation at the FBI and the Justice Department, amid mounting calls for scrutiny of the probe’s beginnings from Trump and prominent congressional Republicans. “More generally, I am reviewing the conduct of the investigation and trying to get my arms around all of the aspects of the counterintelligence investigation that was conducted in the summer of 2016,” Barr said.
The day following Barr’s release of his summary of the Mueller report, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC), announced that his panel also would investigate alleged FISA abuses at the start of the Russia investigation and called on Barr to appoint a new special counsel to investigate “the other side of the story.” Graham has been calling for a second special counsel since 2017 to investigate “whether or not a counterintelligence investigation was opened as a back door to spy on the Trump campaign.
House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes (R-CA), last month, sent eight criminal referrals to the Justice Department regarding alleged misconduct by DOJ and FBI officials during the Trump-Russia investigation. (Video Below)
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