WASHINGTON -- Robert Mueller, the special counsel, will not testify next week before Congress as Democratic lawmakers had hoped, though they are far from giving up on hearing from him despite President Donald Trump's broad objections to congressional investigations.
"It won't be next week," Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said Friday. "He will come at some point," he added. "If necessary, we'll subpoena him."
On Thursday, Trump said he would leave the decision to Attorney General William Barr, who had previously said he had no problem with Mueller testifying on Capitol Hill.
Democrats view getting Mueller to testify before the Judiciary Committee as the most consequential of several fights Nadler is waging with the White House over access to the complete, unredacted special counsel report and its underlying evidence of interference in the 2016 election -- including more details about at least 10 instances of possible obstruction of justice that Mueller and his team investigated. Tensions have grown in recent days as the legislative and executive branches of government fight over constitutional powers.
On Wednesday, the Judiciary Committee voted to recommend that Barr be held in contempt of Congress after he refused to release Mueller's entire report and its evidence. The House Intelligence Committee has issued a subpoena for the same material and could follow up with another contempt vote.
House leaders have yet to schedule a floor vote on the Judiciary Committee's contempt citation and have expressed interest in waiting for other potential citations before doing so. On Friday, Nadler sent a letter to Barr saying that he was still open to negotiating an off-ramp in the meantime if the Justice Department would reconsider its position.
"We note that the full House has not yet taken action on this matter," Nadler wrote. "The committee stands ready to resume the accommodation process to attempt to reach a compromise."
The Mueller report was redacted to protect secret grand jury information and details that could jeopardize open investigations. The Justice Department has held that fulfilling the House subpoenas would require violating the law protecting grand jury secrets.
This week, the White House stopped Donald McGahn, the former White House counsel and a central witness in the special counsel investigation, from providing documents to lawmakers under subpoena. The subpoena from the Judiciary Committee also requires McGahn to appear before the panel on May 21. Nadler said that if McGahn was a no-show, lawmakers would consider more contempt citations.
Nadler said his committee had been negotiating with the Justice Department over testimony from Mueller, who is still a department employee. He said department officials had said Mueller would no longer be considered a government employee in a matter of weeks, but would not give a specific date. Nadler said Mueller might be more comfortable testifying as a private citizen, free from some of the Justice Department's constraints.
Nadler and other Democrats are eager to ask Mueller about the instances of possible obstruction of justice that his team examined. In the final report, Mueller said, "while this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
Before releasing a summary of the report's findings, Barr and Rod Rosenstein, the outgoing deputy attorney general, said they reviewed the material from Mueller and concluded that Trump had not obstructed justice.
TAX-RETURN SUBPOENAS
Meanwhile, a top House Democrat on Friday issued subpoenas for six years of President Donald Trump's tax returns, giving Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig a deadline of next Friday to deliver them.
Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., issued the subpoenas days after Mnuchin refused to comply with demands to turn over Trump's returns. Mnuchin told the panel he wouldn't provide Trump's tax records because the panel's request "lacks a legitimate legislative purpose," as Supreme Court precedent requires.
Neal reminded the two Trump appointees in a letter Friday that federal law states that the IRS "shall furnish" the tax returns of any individual upon the request of the chairmen of Congress' tax-writing committees and that Ways and Means "has never been denied" a request.
If Mnuchin and Rettig refuse to comply with the subpoenas, Neal is likely to file a lawsuit in federal court. He indicated earlier this week that he was leaning toward filing a court case immediately but changed course after meeting with lawyers for the House.
Neal originally demanded access to Trump's tax returns in early April. He maintains that the committee is looking into the effectiveness of IRS mandatory audits of tax returns of all sitting presidents, a way to justify his claim that the panel has a potential legislative purpose. Democrats are confident in their legal justification and say Trump is stalling in an attempt to punt the issue past the 2020 election.
In rejecting Neal's request earlier this week, Mnuchin said he relied on the advice of the Justice Department. He concluded that the Treasury Department is "not authorized to disclose the requested returns and return information." Mnuchin also has said that Neal's request would potentially weaponize private tax returns for political purposes.
Republicans say Neal is using the 1924 law that empowers him to obtain any individual's tax filing to play politics with Trump. Democrats also want to look into Trump's business dealings, particularly his business relationships with foreigners, and to see to whom he owes money.
"Your request is merely a means to access and make public the tax returns of a single individual for purely political purposes," said ranking Ways and Means panel Republican Kevin Brady, R-Texas.
"While I do not take this step lightly, I believe this action gives us the best opportunity to succeed and obtain the requested material," Neal said in a statement.
Trump has privately made clear that he has no intention of turning over the much-coveted records. He is the first president since Watergate to decline to make his tax returns public, often claiming that he would release them if he was not under audit.
FBI DEFENDED
Separately, former top FBI lawyer James Baker offered a robust defense of the bureau's investigation into Trump and his 2016 campaign, taking aim at Trump's allegation that the inquiry was tantamount to a coup and describing how he sought to ensure agents' work was on solid legal footing.
"There was no attempted coup," Baker said bluntly. "There was no way in hell that I was going to allow some coup or coup attempt to take place on my watch."
The comments, which came at a taping of the Lawfare podcast in front of a live audience at the Brookings Institution, were Baker's first public remarks on the investigation that was eventually taken over by Mueller. Baker had addressed questions about the inquiry previously only in private sessions with congressional committees, though transcripts of those comments were later released.
Baker, who was interviewed by Lawfare Editor-in- Chief Ben Wittes, said he was motivated to talk because he "just became sick of all the BS that is said about the origins of the investigation," and he wanted to "reassure the American people that it was done for lawful, legitimate reason."
The Justice Department inspector general is investigating the handling of various aspects of the Russia case, and Barr has said he will conduct a separate review. Barr recently alleged that government "spying" occurred on the Trump campaign, and while he has insisted he did not mean to imply wrongdoing, critics note that his language mirrors the president's attacks on the bureau and its investigation. Baker was the FBI's general counsel when the Russia investigation was initiated and when Mueller took over. He was reassigned from the top legal post in December 2017 after he got caught up in an inquiry into a leak at the FBI, and he confirmed Friday that the case is ongoing.
He said he talked with investigators for "many hours," though those conversations happened a year and a half ago.
"I'm confident that I did nothing wrong," he said.
Information for this article was contributed by Eileen Sullivan and Nicholas Fandos of The New York Times; by Matt Zapotosky of The Washington Post; and by Andrew Taylor and Jonathan Lemire of The Associated Press.
A Section on 05/11/2019