(Wednesday), the House Judiciary Committee voted to hold Attorney General Barr in contempt of Congress.
Mr. Barr has been transparent.
He made the Mueller report available to them – 99 percent un-redacted in the obstruction section of that report.
Instead of reading it, the Democrats who voted contempt moved like lightning straight to the charge of contempt.
To me, that’s not good-faith negotiation.
In a similar situation, now a few years ago, in a Democratic administration with a Democratic attorney general, with the House of Representatives held by the Republicans, the House only held Attorney General Holder in contempt after many months of negotiations over documents that were withheld on bogus grounds.
And just for, connecting that to an issue, that was the Fast and the Furious investigation that I was involved in as well.
We had a very good case against Holder.
We attempted to negotiate with Holder for a long period of time before the other body held him in contempt.
This particular issue of contempt of this attorney general is not a good case.
I would like to say for a person who promotes congressional oversight of every Democrat and Republican president, to make sure they faithfully execute the law, that what the House Judiciary Committee did yesterday, just a few days after Mr. Barr didn’t do exactly what they wanted him to do, and comparing that with the negotiations that we had with the executive branch of the Obama attorney general on Fast and Furious.
That this is going to make it very, very difficult in the future for Congress to conduct its constitutional role of oversight because future presidents are going to use this as an example of bad-faith attempt to negotiate with the executive branch of government to get what you want.
And maybe what they want isn’t real information or real congressional oversight.
They may be trying to make political points.
Author: Charles Grassley
Chuck Grassley of New Hartford has represented Iowa in the United States Senate since 1980.
