WASHINGTON - The White House on Wednesday invoked the legal principle of executive privilege to block the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's unredacted Russia report as a US House panel met to vote on holding Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for refusing to hand over the document.
"Every single day the president is making the case. He's becoming self-impeachable," Pelosi told the Washington Post, referring to the impeachment process in Congress to remove a president from office. Pelosi added that she believed that Barr, the top US law enforcement official and a Trump appointee, should be held in contempt of Congress.
Democrats condemned the White House for claiming that right to defy the committee's subpoena seeking the report. Trump is stonewalling numerous investigations by House Democrats, ranging from Mueller's probe to Trump's tax returns and his past financial records and White House granting of high-level security clearances to member of his family. Court action is likely to follow.
Nadler subpoenaed the full document and all underlying evidence, saying the material was necessary for lawmakers to determine whether Trump obstructed justice by trying to impede the Mueller probe. Barr missed two subpoena deadlines for turning over the material, the latest on Monday. The redacted Mueller report details extensive contacts between Trump's 2016 campaign and Moscow as well as the campaign's expectation of benefiting from Russia's actions. But Mueller said there was not sufficient evidence to show a criminal conspiracy between Moscow and the campaign. The report also describes a series of actions Trump took to try to impede Mueller's investigation.