‘The Committee’s impeachment investigation related to obstruction of justice pertaining to the Russia investigation is ongoing…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) House Democrats asked the Supreme Court on Monday to grant them confidential grand jury materials from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation so they can decide whether or not to impeach President Donald Trump again.
For months, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., has been trying to obtain the witness material, held by the Justice Department.
The DOJ has refused to grant Nadler’s committee permission, but the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in March that the House was permitted to access the Mueller files.
The DOJ appealed, and now the case is headed to the Supreme Court.
Democrats admitted in a court filing this week that the real reason Nadler’s committee wants the DOJ’s filings is to determine “whether to recommend new articles of impeachment” against Trump.
Mueller’s investigation determined there was no evidence that Trump colluded with Russia, rendering the original investigation moot by most standards.
Nonetheless, Nadler and his partisan cohorts have clung to the notion of charging the president on a technicality for refusing to cooperate fully with the two-year probe that occupied much of his first term.
“The Committee’s impeachment investigation related to obstruction of justice pertaining to the Russia investigation is ongoing,” the Democrats’ general counsel, Douglas Letter, wrote in the filing, according to CNN.
Attorney General William Barr ruled after receiving the Mueller Report that since the original charge was errantly—and perhaps unlawfully—predicated, a case for obstruction would be unwinnable.
As with the Ukraine ‘scandal,’ for which House Democrats earlier impeached Trump without citing any legal violations, it is widely believed that their campaign to put him on the offensive is aimed at deflecting their own liabilities.
A looming criminal investigation by DOJ special prosecutor John Durham has threatened to ensnare Trump’s political adversaries, including many top-level officials from the Obama administration.
Recently declassified documents have revealed that members of the intelligence community, Obama staffers and Democrats in Congress such as Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., knowingly lied at various times about the presence of evidence that would link Trump to Russia.
This allowed them to spy on members of Trump’s 2016 campaign—and to continue wreaking havoc, both during the transition of power and early days Trump’s presidency, inflicting political damage that helped Democrats to reclaim the House in 2018.
That, in turn, fulfilled a vicious cycle by empowering them to wage even more specious accusations and politically motivated oversight investigations against the president.
“If this material reveals new evidence supporting the conclusion that President Trump committed impeachable offenses that are not covered by the [earlier] Articles adopted by the House, the Committee will proceed accordingly—including, if necessary, by considering whether to recommend new articles of impeachment,” Letter wrote in his recent filing.
The DOJ has asked the Supreme Court to block the Democrats’ latest request, arguing that once Congress gets its hands on confidential information, the “secrecy” of the material “will irrevocably be lost.”
But House Democrats are fighting the notion, claiming that they should be allowed to continue “without delay” their never-ending impeachment quest.
“This substantial delay,” Letter argued, “will seriously endanger the Committee’s ability to complete its impeachment investigation during the current Congress.”
Nadler has continuously insisted that his committee is “entitled” to the relevant grand jury materials, which were redacted from Mueller’s original report.
“The Committee remains committed to holding the President accountable to the rule of law and preventing improper interference in law enforcement investigations,” he said.
Liberty Headlines’ Ben Sellers contributed to this report.