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The Department of Justice called the vote to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress “politically motivated and unnecessary.”
“It is deeply disappointing that elected representatives of the American people have chosen to engage in such inappropriate political theatrics,” department spokesperson Kerri Kupec said in a statement.
Read the DOJ’s full statement:
House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler called today’s vote to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress “a very grave and momentous step.”
He went on to say the committee had no other choice but to take this action.
The Democratic congressman accused Barr of turning the Department of Justice “into an instrument of Trump personally rather than an instrument of justice and representative of the United States.”
“We are now in a constitutional crisis,” Nadler declared.
The House Judiciary Committee just voted along party lines to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress, escalating the looming constitutional collision over the Mueller report between congressional Democrats and the Trump administration.
The party-line vote was 24-16.
What happens next: The contempt resolution now moves to the full House for consideration.
Barr was held in contempt for not complying with the committee’s subpoena for the unredacted Mueller report and underlying evidence. The contempt vote came after President Trump asserted executive privilege this morning over the materials that the committee had subpoenaed, following through on a threat the Justice Department made last night if the committee moved forward with the contempt vote.
The House Judiciary Committee is voting right now on whether it will hold Attorney General William Bar in contempt of Congress after the Justice Department declined to provide an unredacted version of the Mueller report to Congress.
This marks the first time that House Democrats are moving to punish a Trump administration official for defying a congressional subpoena and represents a dramatic escalation in tensions between Democrats and the White House.
The House Judiciary Committee has adopted an amendment from chairman Jerry Nadler adding a section to the contempt report that responds to President Trump’s assertion of executive privilege.
The amendment passed along party lines.
Why this matters: Earlier today, the Justice Department informed Nadler that the “President has asserted executive privilege over the entirety of the subpoenaed materials.”
What happens next: The committee is now in recess until 2:30 p.m. ET, when Nadler said they would resume the markup.
Moments after the White House announced President Trump would assert executive privilege over special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders slammed House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, whom she said is seeking to “break the law” with his requests for the unredacted report.
She attacked Nadler’s understanding of the law, saying that she feels she “(understands) it better than he does.”
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders was just asked how the invocation of executive privilege affects the President’s position on special counsel Robert Mueller testifying and if Mueller’s employment with DOJ might be extended under the circumstances.
She said she wasn’t aware of anything new on that.
Some context: On Sunday, President Trump reversed course and said Mueller should not testify before Congress. That remark came just two days after he told reporters that the attorney general should make that decision.
“The President’s made his feelings on that very clear,” Sanders said today. “This is over, and just because the Democrats didn’t like the result doesn’t mean they get to redo this process.”
The special counsel’s office would not comment when CNN asked if his employment is being extended under the circumstances.
The White House now says there will be no press coverage of the President’s cabinet meeting, which was scheduled for 11:30 a.m. ET.
Typically, coverage is allowed.
The next time we see the President is at 3:25 p.m. ET when he departs for Florida.
Today’s assertion of protective executive privilege over subpoenaed documents has no direct bearing on special counsel Robert Mueller testifying before the House, according to a Department of Justice official.
From a practical standpoint, however, whether a legal battle over the underlying documents affects Mueller’s testimony remains to be seen.
Mueller is tentatively scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on May 15.
The official further disagreed with House Judiciary Chairman Nadler’s assertion that the President waived executive privilege by providing materials to Mueller in the first place, saying there is past precedent for providing materials to law enforcement.
Rep. Cedric Richmond, a Democrat on House Judiciary, told CNN that Democrats should “push back” and start talking more seriously about impeachment.
This comes moments after President Trump asserted executive privilege over the Mueller report.
Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said “this is a show” going into the hearing this morning. The hearing was called to vote on whether to find Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress.
Collins said he believes “there is no precedent for the rush we’re on right now.”
Asked if he thinks this is a constitutional crisis, as Nadler said this morning, he answered:
“I think the only constitutional process here is to the chairman actually trying to make the attorney general go forward on stuff and give him stuff that he knows that he can’t give legally. And I think he actually admitted that as well. That he can’t legally have that stuff. The constitutional crisis will be a judiciary chairman trying to subpoena documents from the attorney general to force the attorney to give them stuff that he knows he can’t have.”
He was also asked about the Justice Department’s threat last night to ask President Trump to potentially assert executive privilege (note: he was just before Trump actually asserted that privilege).
“I think the DOJ was just responding to a very unaccommodating chairman. And that’s the way they chose to respond,” he said.
Just minutes before the House Judiciary committee hearing on contempt began, the Justice Department told lawmakers that the President had invoked executive privilege over all the materials that Rep. Jerry Nadler had subpoenaed.
“Just minutes ago, it took that dramatic step,” Chairman Nadler said at the beginning of the hearing.
Nadler responded by saying the vote would be moving forward, accusing the Justice Department of a “clear escalation” in its defiance . He urged negotiations to continue despite what he described as a “last-minute outburst.”
“The Department’s decision reflects President Trump’s blanket defiance of Congress’s constitutionally mandated duties,” Nadler said in a statement.
On CNN’s “New Day” this morning, Nadler said the United States is in a “constitutional crisis.” He added, “We are in one because the President is disobeying the law, is refusing all information to Congress.”
In a letter to President Trump, Attorney General Barr asked the President to “make a protective assertion of executive privilege with respect to Department of Justice documents recently subpoenaed” by the House Judiciary Committee.
Here’s the first part of his letter:
The Justice Department has informed House Judiciary chairman Jerry Nadler this morning that the “President has asserted executive privilege over the entirety of the subpoenaed materials.”
Here’s the letter from the Justice Department:
The House Judiciary committee is voting on whether to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress this morning for refusing to comply with the committee’s subpoena.
However: Moments ago, Chairman Nadler announced that the Justice Department had informed him that the “President has asserted executive privilege over the entirety of the subpoenaed materials.”
Chairman Nadler said earlier this morning on CNN’s New Day that the US is in a “constitutional crisis” over a showdown about the release of a full version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
CLARIFICATION: This post has been updated to make clear that this vote is currently in progress.
House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler just gaveled today’s hearing into session.
They are set to vote to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress.
Remember: The decision to hold the vote came after the Justice Department declined to provide an unredacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report to Congress. This isn’t related to Barr’s decision not to testify before the committee last week.
The House Judiciary Committee will vote this morning on whether to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress. If the vote passes in the panel, it will then be taken up by the full House.
Being held in contempt of Congress means someone has obstructed the work of either Congress or a congressional committee.
This can take a lot of forms: Sometimes that disobedience means refusing to appear before a committee to testify, and sometimes that means refusing to pony up requested documents.
What’s the point of holding someone in contempt of Congress? According to the Congressional Research Service, contempt can be used to coerce compliance, to punish the person or to remove whatever the obstruction is.
There are several ways members of Congress can do this:
The House Judiciary committee is voting this morning on whether to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress.
The decision to hold the vote came after the Justice Department declined to provide an unredacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report to Congress. This isn’t related to Barr’s decision not to testify before the committee last week.
So what happens next? If the Judiciary Committee votes Wednesday to hold Barr in contempt, the matter would then be taken up by the full House, where Democrats have a 38-seat majority.
The contempt citation is unlikely to have much practical effect — House Republicans held then-Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt during the Obama administration, too — but it ratchets up the stakes for House Democrats and the Justice Department at a sensitive time.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Attorney General William Barr should be held in contempt during an on-stage interview with the Washington Post.
“Yes, he should be held in contempt,” she said.
Remember: She’s referring to the Department of Justice’s failure to comply to the subpoena for the unredacted report, rather than his not showing up to testify.
As for the negotiations this week to avoid the contempt hearing, Pelosi said:
Pelosi deferred again on whether the contempt vote should be brought to the floor.
“They’ll today take their action in the committee and then the next step would be to bring it to the floor. We’ll see what their recommendation is about that,” she said.
On possible impeachment, she reiterated nothing is off the table but still urged caution.
“Well, nothing is ever off the table, but I would say that—there’s… I wish everybody would take a deep breath and be almost prayerful about this.”
