The Department of Justice is willing to take up House Judiciary Committee’s offer to reopen negotiations around Congress seeing the full special counsel report — but with one major condition.
In a letter to the committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) Tuesday, the Department said it would only do so if his committee reverses its vote recommending that Attorney General Bill Barr be held in contempt.
Barr is slated to face a contempt vote on the House floor next week.
The committee subpoenaed an unredacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, as well as its underlying materials, in April and, when Barr didn’t comply, held a committee contempt vote for Barr in early May.
Nadler, nonetheless, took another stab at getting the Justice Department back to the negotiating table with offers to limit the group of lawmakers with access to the materials and to limit what underlying materials they see. The Department in its letter Tuesday welcomed the narrowing of demands, but said it would only resume the negotiations if the committee “takes reasonable steps to restore the status quo ante mooting its May 8 vote and removing any threat of an imminent vote by the House of Representatives to hold the Attorney General in contempt.”
The letter pointed to the agreement the Justice Department came to with the Intelligence Committee, after Chairman Adam Schiff subpoenaed the report’s intelligence-related materials, to let the Department produce the requested materials on a rolling timeline.
Read the letter below:
