Earlier Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee voted to hold Barr in contempt following his refusal to comply with a subpoena demanding an unredacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report on alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Mueller delivered the report to Barr last month, and the attorney general, in turn, provided Congress with a redacted version of the report.
Last week, Barr declined at the 11th hour to testify before the Judiciary Committee on the Mueller report. That same day, the Department of Justice notified the committee it would not deliver the subpoenaed, unredacted report.
BREAKING: House Intel just subpoenaed DOJ for all counterintelligence and foreign intelligence materials in the probe, the full report, and underlying evidence.
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) May 8, 2019
DOJ has responded to our requests with silence and defiance.
Congress needs the material. We will not be obstructed.
"Congress needs the material," Schiff wrote in a Wednesday tweet. "We will not be obstructed."
In a further effort to prevent the Democrat-controlled committees from obtaining an unredacted copy of the report, US President Donald Trump invoked "executive privilege" on Wednesday, which White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called a "protective assertion."
Democrats were further stifled Tuesday when Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin declined House Ways and Means Committee chair Richard Neal's request for Trump's tax returns, saying the request "lacks a legitimate legislative purpose," Sputnik reported. The New York Times subsequently obtained 10 years' worth of the president's tax returns, from the years 1985 to 1994, although those were not the ones sought by Neal.
