As House Chairs Give Barr April 2 Deadline, Trump Sends Advisory ‘Memo’ To ‘Television Producers’

As you can probably imagine, Jerry Nadler, Elijah Cummings, Adam Schiff, Richard Neal, Eliot Engel and Maxine Waters aren’t satisfied that William Barr has passed the bar (and there is a rare triple entendre in there if you look hard enough) when it comes to transparency on the Mueller report.

Monday was a rough day for Democrats and the first order of business when it comes to regrouping after Sunday’s rather devastating news out of the Department of Justice is to obtain the the full special counsel report.

The House of course passed a resolution earlier this month calling for the release of the report by a “slim” margin of 420-0 and on Monday, Mitch McConnell blocked a similar resolution from being taken up in the Senate.

“Whether or not you’re a supporter of President Trump or not, whatever you feel there is no good reason not to make the report public”, Chuck Schumer said, adding that “the American people deserve to see the documentation, what did they do? Who did they approach? What happened?”

McConnell stonewalled. “I look forward to the release of more information in the coming days as the attorney general says he intends to do in consultation with special counsel Mueller”, Mitch said. “And I look forward as well to the continuing parallel work of our Senate colleagues on the Select Committee on Intelligence to study the threats that foreign interference pose to our institutions.”

Well, on the House side of things, Nadler, Schiff, Waters and co. “look forward” to Barr producing the entire report (unredacted) and all of the underlying evidence “no later than April 2”. That’s according to a letter sent to the DoJ on Monday. It’s embedded in full below. Here’s an excerpt:

As you know, on March 14, the full House approved H. Con. Res. 24, calling for the release of the Special Counsel’s report by a vote of 420-0. Each of our committees is currently engaged in oversight activities that go directly to the President’s conduct, his attempts to interfere with federal and congressional investigations, his relationships and communications with the Russian government and other foreign powers, and/or other alleged instances of misconduct.

Your four page summary of the Special Counsel’s review is not sufficient for Congress, as a coequal branch of government, to perform this critical work. The release of the full report and the underlying evidence and documents is urgently needed by our committees to perform their duties under the Constitution.

And so on, and so forth.

Nadler on Sunday indicated his intent to call Barr to testify. Democrats will doubtlessly zero in on the Attorney General’s decision not to pursue the obstruction angle in light of Mueller’s contention that while the report did not conclude Trump committed a crime, it “did not exonerate” him either. Apparently, DoJ was notified weeks in advance that Mueller did not intend to make a determination on the obstruction charge.

Speaking of Nadler and Schiff, their names landed on a somewhat disconcerting “memo” Trump’s communications director sent to “television producers” on Monday.

It lists the following people specifically, but notes that the advisory isn’t “limited” to them:

• Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.
• Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., the chair of the House Judiciary Committee
• Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez
• John Brennan, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency
• Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the chair of the House Intelligence Committee
• Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., who has floated a potential bid for president

“Moving forward, we ask that you employ basic journalistic standards when booking such guests to appear anywhere in your universe of productions”, the memo reads, before advising TV producers that they “should begin by asking” whether the people mentioned above “warrant further appearances in our programming, given the outrageous and unsupported claims made in the past.”

The memo goes on to say that “at a minimum, if these guests do reappear, you should replay the prior statements and challenge them to provide evidence which prompted them to make the wild claims in the first place.”

We want to emphasize that we are not in any way, shape or form, exaggerating or otherwise mischaracterizing that. Trump is now literally laying out the guidelines under which “television producers” will conduct interviews with, in some cases, sitting US congressmen and he has now issued what amounts to an advisory to that effect.

We would encourage you to consider that in the context of what we said on Monday morning in “His Victory Complete, Trump Faces A New Challenge: Defining ‘American Autocracy’”.

With that, we’ll leave you with the letter and the memo.

Letter from House committee chairs to Barr

Letter from Trump communications director to television producers