House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows warning the Department of Justice not to hide evidence of Trump wrongdoing with regard to the Mueller investigation ahead of a possible release of the completed report.
Nadler also said he would take demands to see the report to the Supreme Court if necessary.
Said Nadler on FOX News Sunday: “If the president cannot be indicted … as a matter of law, then the only way to hold the president accountable is for Congress to consider it and act, if warranted. Congress can only do that if it has the information. For the department to take the position that ‘we’re not going to give information because he’s not indicted, like a normal person who’s not indicted because of lack of evidence,’ is equivalent to a cover-up and subverts the only ability to hold the president accountable. And the president no more than anybody else cannot be above the law.”
On the president possibly reviewing the info first: “As we know from the Nixon tapes case, the Supreme Court decided 9-0, executive privilege cannot be used to shield wrongdoing and certainly they should not get an advance look at the report. The report should go public in its entirety and see what the chips fall.”
Nadler repeated many of his assertions to Chuck Todd on Meet The Press: “It’s critical that everything in that report and the underlying evidence be public, be open to the American people. That transparency is key. America needs answers as to what’s been going on….As we learned from the Nixon tapes case, executive privilege cannot be used to hide wrongdoing.”
And Nadler also paid a visit to CNN’s State of the Union: “We’re already hearing the president may want to claim executive privilege for some of this, but the fact is he has no right to claim executive privilege on any evidence of wrongdoing.”
“What Congress has to do is look at a broader picture. We have the responsibility of protecting the rule of law,” added Nadler, “so that our democratic institutions are not greatly damaged by this president.”
As for accepting Barr’s summary, Nadler added, “We’re likely to see what Barr characterizes as the main conclusions of the Mueller report, and we’ll accept them, but subject to seeing all the underlying data. We have to make judgments, the American people have to make judgments, as to how founded those conclusions are or Barr’s summary of the conclusions are.”
“I am suggesting that people make judgments and those judgments could be right or wrong,” he continued.
If the DOJ refuses to release the report, “We’ll try to negotiate. We’ll try everything else first. But if we have to, yes, we’ll issue subpoenas to get that information.”
Nadler added that they would take it to the Supreme Court if need be.
