Adam Schiff
House Intel Chairman Adam Schiff vowed to use ‘enforcement action’ against Attorney General Bill Barr on Thursday after the Mueller report deadline passed.
Schiff said Thursday that his Committee will consider “enforcement action” against Barr for defying his subpoena for Mueller’s unredacted report and the underlying intelligence materials.
Last week, Adam Schiff issued a subpoena to the DOJ to obtain Mueller’s full report along with the underlying grand jury material and the supporting counterintelligence information that Mueller’s team gathered during their near two-year inquisition.
Schiff gave the DOJ a Wednesday deadline and refused to work with Bill Barr’s proposed counteroffer.
On Wednesday, the Justice Department sent Schiff a counteroffer to negotiate with the Committee for lawmakers’ access to the full, unredacted report.
The House Intel Panel sent the DOJ 12 requests for specific documents related to the Mueller investigation, Schiff said Thursday evening to reporters. But “the deadline came and went without the production of a single document,” Schiff added, “raising profound questions about whether the department has any intention to honor its legal obligations,” reported Politico.
Schiff then spread the lie that President Trump himself is most likely instructing the DOJ to “stonewall Congress.”
“It is certainly my sense that this is a top-down instruction from the president to stonewall all congressional requests, no matter how reasonable,” Schiff said, adding that he would consult with the House general counsel about the best way to enforce his requests, which could include contempt of Congress.
Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd told Schiff in a letter on Wednesday that all members of the Intelligence Committee are welcome to view a less redacted version of Mueller’s report, but the document, that is available to certain lawmakers to view in a SCIF [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility], does not include secret grand jury material.
Schiff was not satisfied and said the DOJ is defying his subpoena so he will to “seek to enforce it through whatever means is required.”
Last week, the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee voted to hold Bill Barr in contempt for defying the panel’s subpoena for Mueller’s full unredacted report and the underlying evidence.
By law Attorney General Bill Barr cannot release secret grand jury material to Congress or the public but Chairmen Schiff and Nadler are holding him in contempt anyway.
