WASHINGTON — The White House’s top lawyer told the House Judiciary Committee chairman Wednesday that Congress has no right to a “do-over” of the special counsel’s investigation of President Donald Trump and refused a broad demand for records and testimony from dozens of current and former White House staff.
White House Counsel Pat Cipollone’s letter to committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler constitutes a sweeping rejection — not just of Nadler’s request for White House records, but of Congress’s standing to investigate Trump for possible obstruction of justice. In his letter, Cipollone repeated a claim the White House and Trump’s business have begun making: that Congress is not a law enforcement body and does not have a legitimate purpose to investigate the questions it is pursuing.
“Congressional investigations are intended to obtain information to aid in evaluating potential legislation, not to harass political opponents or to pursue an unauthorized ‘do-over’ of exhaustive law enforcement investigations conducted by the Department of Justice,” Cipollone wrote.
Cipollone said the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report now makes Congress’ questions moot. He stressed that probe was “exhaustive” — the product of 2,800 subpoenas, 500 executed search warrants and 500 witness interviews — and that the president supported the report’s full release “in the interest of transparency.”
The White House’s firm stand represents yet another escalation in the bitter standoff between the White House and House Democrats. Trump and his allies are working to block more than 20 separate investigations into his actions as president, his personal finances and his administration’s policies, according to a Washington Post analysis.
Nadler in early March requested documents from 81 Trump allies or Trump-related entities as part of a broad investigation into whether Trump abused his power, obstructed justice and engaged in public corruption. The letters went to both current and former official and campaign staffers as well as top Trump Organization officials and Trump’s family members.
In the Wednesday letter, Cipollone argued that the request for testimony and records from 81 individuals and agencies is intrusive and seeks to pull back the covers on reams of confidential discussions and sensitive law enforcement material that is normally shielded by executive privilege.
But the White House is only directly responding to Nadler’s letter to the White House. The White House Counsel’s Office said its objection applies to current and former officials whose information it argues is technically the property of the White House.
“[T]he Committee rushed to vote on contempt for failing to provide 100% and immediate compliance with a subpoena that seeks millions of pages of documents from a prosecutor’s files,” he said. “Moreover, the Committee — for the first time in American history — has voted to recommend that the Attorney General be held in contempt because he refused to violate the law by turning over grand-jury materials that he may not lawfully disclose.”
Washington Post writer Rachael Bade contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on www.bangordailynews.com.
