U.S. President Richard Nixon during Press Conference Regarding Middle East Crisis and Watergate, 1973.
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Justice Department lawyers on Tuesday used the example of Richard Nixon’s impeachment inquiry to argue that the House Judiciary Committee should be denied its request to obtain information about grand jury materials assembled under special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of President Donald Trump.
Lawyers from the Justice Department surprised the judge, Beryl Howard, by arguing that the decision to release normally secret grand jury materials to the House in 1974, when Nixon faced impeachment, was incorrect, and that those materials should have been kept from Congress, according to NBC News.
Those materials were considered the “roadmap” that led to Nixon’s expected impeachment that year.
“Wow,” Howell said after hearing the Justice Department’s position during a hearing in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
“The department is taking extraordinary positions in this case.”
The Judiciary Committee is seeking the Mueller grand jury information as part of its ongoing impeachment inquiry into Trump. That information would include transcripts of testimony by witnesses to the grand jury.
Douglas Letter, a lawyer for the committee, told Howard that the House of Representatives is entitled to “absolute deference” in impeachment inquiries, according to NBC News.
Howard ended the hearing without making a decision on the House’s request.
The impeachment inquiry kicked off two weeks ago after it was revealed that Trump, who had been witholding Congressionally appropriated military aid from the nation of Ukraine, pressured Ukraine’s newly elected president in July to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
Letter said that the fact that the inquiry was sparked by the Ukraine issue did not mean that the House cannot examine Mueller grand jury material, which is not related to Ukraine, and which was produced before Trump’s call with the country’s president in July.
Letter said House committees are eyeing different articles of impeachment, which could include obstructing Congress from getting informaton to which it is entitled. Before Trump released a transcript of his call with Ukraine’s leader, the Trump administration had blocked efforts by Congress to get information about a complaint by an intelligence community whistleblower who had raised red flags about that phone call.
The Mueller grand jury had investigated Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, possible coordination with Russians by members of the Trump campaign, and possible obstruction of justice in the Russia probe by Trump himself.
Mueller’s report on his investigation found Russia had made repeated efforts to interfere in the election, but did not find evidence that Trump campaign affliates conspired with Russian agents in those efforts.
The report did not accuse Trump of obstruction, but also pointedly did not exonerate the president of such conduct.
Letter told Howard that what Trump knews as a presidential candidate about WikiLeaks, the document disclosure activist group, could be highly relevant to the ongoing impeachment inquiry. During the 2016 presidential campaign WikiLeaks released emails that had been stolen by alleged Russian agents from the Democratic National Committee and from Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta.
– Additional reporting by Kevin Breuninger
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