WASHINGTON -- A top House Democrat threatened Sunday to call special counsel Robert Mueller to Capitol Hill, subpoena documents and sue President Donald Trump's administration if the full report on Mueller's Russia investigation is not made public.
Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said his committee will keep close watch on new Attorney General William Barr to see if he were "to try to bury any part of this report." Schiff, D-Calif., also pledged to "take it to court if necessary."
He said anything less than complete disclosure would leave Barr, who now oversees the investigation, with "a tarnished legacy."
Schiff's comments come as Democrats have made it clear that they are ready for an aggressive, public fight with the Justice Department if they are not satisfied with the level of access they have to Mueller's findings.
Mueller is showing signs of wrapping up his nearly 2-year-old investigation into possible coordination between Trump associates and Russia's efforts to sway the 2016 election. The report isn't expected to be delivered to the Justice Department this week, as some media outlets earlier reported.
Justice Department regulations call for Mueller's report to be a confidential account of the individuals charged, as well as those who were not charged. Barr, who was confirmed earlier this month, will then summarize the work for Congress.
Barr has said he wants to release as much information as he can. But during his confirmation hearing last month, Barr made clear that he will decide what the public sees, and that any report will be in his words, not Mueller's.
On Friday, Schiff and five other House committee leaders sent a letter to Barr emphasizing their expectation that he will release the report to the public "without delay and to the maximum extent permitted by law." The Democrats warned against withholding information on Trump on the basis of department opinions that the president can't be indicted.
Schiff on Sunday said Trump should welcome the report's release, given his repeated claims that there was no collusion between his campaign and the Russian government.
"We are going to share this information with the public, and if the president is serious about all of his claims of exoneration, then he should welcome the publication of this report," Schiff said on ABC's This Week.
Schiff suggested that anything short of Mueller's full report would not satisfy Democrats. He pointed to a public interest in seeing some of the underlying evidence, such as information gathered from searches conducted on longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone and Paul Manafort, a former Trump campaign chairman.
With Democrats taking control of the House in January and Schiff now the committee chairman, he has undertaken his own investigation. That means re-examining issues covered by a now-closed GOP probe that concluded there was no evidence Trump's campaign conspired with Russia. Schiff has said the committee also will pursue new matters, including whether foreign governments have leverage over Trump, his relatives or associates.
Some Democrats are pointing to documents that Justice Department officials provided to Congress in the wake of the investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails, as well as information that Republicans demanded as part of their own inquiries.
Schiff said he told department officials after they released information related to the Clinton investigation that "this was a new precedent they were setting, and they were going to have to live by this precedent whether it was a Congress controlled by the Democrats or Republicans."
Beyond that, however, is "the intense public need to know here, which I think overrides any other consideration," he said.
Other Democrats echoed Schiff's pledge to take action.
Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass.,. said on CBS News' Face the Nation that if Barr "sanitizes" the report, lawmakers of both parties "have a responsibility to ensure that the American people know what happened in 2016."
In a CNN interview, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., a 2020 presidential candidate, described herself as "an advocate for a public report" but also said that lawmakers should be given any supporting information, including in a classified hearing if necessary.
Republicans have pushed back by increasingly directing their criticism at Schiff, with many arguing that he has rushed to proclaim Trump guilty without waiting for the facts to come out. Trump earlier this month derided Schiff as "a political hack" when asked about his expanding investigations into the president's finances.
Former Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., mocked Schiff on Fox Business Network's Sunday Morning Futures, saying that while no witnesses so far have alleged conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, "that three-eyed raven, Adam Schiff -- who can see things nobody else can see -- says he has evidence."
In a separate appearance on the program, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., warned that if Democrats "keep pushing" the issue of collusion, "It's going to blow up in their face in 2020" among voters at the polls.
Many Republicans have also argued that the full report be released, though most have stopped short of saying it should be subpoenaed.
"We need to get the facts out there, get this behind us in a way that people thought that anybody that should have been talked to was talked to, any question that should have been asked, was asked," said Sen. Roy Blunt, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Face the Nation.
But asked if he thought there could be a subpoena, Blunt, R-Mo., said, "I don't know that you can."
The Senate committee also has been investigating whether Trump's campaign conspired with Russia. Blunt suggested that a conclusion in that probe might wait until after Mueller's report.
"We'd like to have frankly a little more access to the Mueller investigation before we come to a final conclusion," Blunt said. "His report will help us write our final report. We've given Mueller full access to all of our interviews, all of our investigation. We haven't had that reciprocated, and so we'll soon find out what else is out there that we might not know about."
Information for this article was contributed by Mary Clare Jalonick and Hope Yen of The Associated Press; and by Felicia Sonmez, Devlin Barrett, Karoun Demirjian and Peter Holley of The Washington Post.
A Section on 02/25/2019