House Democrats on Thursday blew up their hearing with Attorney General William Barr, turning it into a spectacle with an empty chair after he declined to attend over their insistence that staff lawyers question him.
«You don’t have to be an expert in the executive branch of government to discern the pattern here. They’re not cooperating with anything,» said Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. «The pattern is one of absolute defiance of the lawmaking branch of government, and we can’t accept that.»
Democrats said they were not about to let the Justice Department dictate the terms of their hearing when their subpoenas are being ignored, witnesses aren’t testifying, the Justice Department won’t turn over the full Mueller report and the Treasury Department won’t provide the President’s tax returns. They were willing to risk Barr not showing before they would agree to change the hearing format at the Justice Department’s request.
At a closed-door meeting of members this week, Democrats discussed their way forward, and Nadler and his staff signaled that they were going to play the long game in dealing with their dispute with the Justice Department, according to a member in the room. Democrats say that if they were to give in on the issue, it would be a slippery slope to losing ground in their other fights.
President Donald Trump’s flat-out refusal to cooperate with their investigations has Democrats considering all options in response, from trying to fine or jail those who defy subpoenas to taking another look at whether Trump’s obstruction amounts to an impeachable offense.
«The failure of Attorney General Barr to come to the hearing today is simply another step in the administration’s growing attack on American democracy, and its attack on the right of Congress to be a coordinate branch of government,» Nadler said after Thursday’s hearing. «The administration by its policy of across-the-board defiance of congressional subpoenas is saying that only the executive matters, that we don’t need, we don’t want, limitations by Congress.
