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THE FAT BOY GIVES UP
The Justice Department has agreed to provide Congress with key evidence collected by Robert S. Mueller III, the former special counsel.CreditCreditDoug Mills/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department, after weeks of tense negotiations, has agreed to provide Congress with key evidence collected by Robert S. Mueller III that could shed light on possible obstruction of justice and abuse of power by President Trump, the House Judiciary Committee said on Monday.
The exact scope of the material the Justice Department has agreed to provide was not immediately clear, but the committee signaled that it was a breakthrough after weeks of wrangling over those materials and others that the Judiciary panel demanded under subpoena.
The announcement appeared to provide a rationale for House Democrats’ choice,
announced last week, to back away from threats to hold Attorney General William P. Barr in contempt of Congress. The House will still proceed on Tuesday with a vote to empower the Judiciary Committee to take Mr. Barr to court to fully enforce its subpoena, but even that may no longer be necessary, the panel’s leader said.
“We have agreed to allow the department time to demonstrate compliance with this agreement. If the Department proceeds in good faith and we are able to obtain everything that we need, then there will be no need to take further steps,” Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the committee chairman, said in a statement. “If important information is held back, then we will have no choice but to enforce our subpoena in court and consider other remedies.”
foreshadowed in an exchange of letters in recent weeks between the committee and the department. In a May 24 letter outlining a proposed compromise Mr. Nadler wrote that he was “prepared to prioritize production of materials that would provide the committee with the most insight into certain incidents when the special counsel found ‘substantial evidence’ of obstruction of justice.”
Those incidences include Mr. Trump’s attempts to fire Mr. Mueller, the special counsel; his request that Donald F. McGahn II, the former White House counsel, create “a fraudulent record denying that incident;” and Mr. Trump’s efforts to get former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to undo his recusal and curtail the scope of the special counsel inquiry.
After weeks of objections, the Justice Department said it found the proposal reasonable and would work with the committee to share the materials in question, but only if the House would back off holding Mr. Barr in contempt of Congress for his defiance of the subpoena in question.
Democrats were willing to do so. The House still plans to vote on Tuesday to authorize the committee to go to a federal court against Mr. Barr to seek full enforcement of its subpoena and to petition a judge to unseal grand jury secrets related to the case for Congress. But in a sign of the newfound cooperation,
the House will not formally vote to hold Mr. Barr in contempt of Congress, leveling a criminal accusation against him, at least for now.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/06/...on=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/07/...on=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending