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Washington, D.C. –Today, House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) delivered the following floor statement in support of H.Res. 430, a resolution authorizing the Committee on the Judiciary to initiate or intervene in judicial proceedings to enforce certain subpoenas and for other purposes:
"Mr. Speaker, when a congressional committee issues a subpoena, compliance is not optional. We expect witnesses to testify when summoned. We expect the Administration to comply with subpoenas and to provide us with the materials we require to do our jobs.
"Of course, there may be differences between the Congress and the Executive Branch as to what information can be produced on a timely basis. When those differences arise, we are required to seek a reasonable accommodation. Congress may not get every page demanded in its subpoena, but we can usually work out a way forward for both branches of government.
"Such is the case for the requests we have made to the Department of Justice seeking access to the full Mueller Report and the underlying evidence—requests we first made on February 22, nearly four months ago.After refusing for almost four months to provide us with these critical documents, the Department of Justice has finally agreed to develop a process for us to view the Special Counsel’s most important files. We are hopeful this will provide us with key evidence that the Special Counsel relied on in detailing allegations concerning obstruction of justice and other misconduct. We viewed the first batch of that evidence yesterday.
"Given this potential breakthrough, we will hold the criminal contempt process for Attorney General Barr in abeyance for now.
"But President Trump has vowed to fight all of the subpoenas. And true to his word, he has blocked key witnesses from testifying before the Judiciary Committee, including his former White House Counsel, Don McGahn, whose account of the President’s actions was featured in the Mueller Report.
"The President has claimed absolute immunity for this critical witness to prevent him from even showing up. He has invoked executive privilege to prevent us from seeing documents that stopped being privileged long ago—including materials relating to the Mueller Report—if they were ever privileged to begin with.He has done the same in response to Congress’ important work unrelated to the Mueller Report, and he has ordered the agencies not to cooperate with even our most basic oversight requests.
"This unprecedented stonewalling by the Administration is completely unacceptable. The committees have a constitutional responsibility to conduct oversight, to make recommendations to the House as necessary, and to craft legislation that will curb the waste, fraud, and abuse on full display in the Trump Administration. This is why it is important that the Judiciary Committee be able to act in such matters using all of our Article 1 powers, as contemplated in this Resolution and described in both the Rules Committee Report and the House Judiciary Committee’s Contempt Report.
"I urge my colleagues to support this resolution so that we can get into court and break this stonewall without delay.
"I yield back the balance of my time."
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