The House Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed the Department of Justice for the full Mueller report.
In a tweet posted Wednesday evening, chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff announced the Justice Department has been subpoenaed for all counterintelligence and foreign intelligence materials in the probe, the full report and underlying evidence.
The intelligence committee subpoena requires Attorney General William Barr to produce the documents by May 15.
“DOJ has responded to our requests with silence and defiance,” Schiff wrote. “Congress needs the material. We will not be obstructed.”
Get daily National news
WATCH: Republican on judiciary committee slams Democrats over holding Barr in contempt
A redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report was released to the public by Barr in April; however, Democrats say they want to see the full document.
Schiff’s tweet came hours after the U.S. House Judiciary Committee approved a measure to hold Barr in contempt for refusing to hand over the unredacted copy of the Mueller report.
Speaking to reporters after the vote, House Judiciary chair Jerry Nadler said the showdown over the release of the full, unredacted report has pushed America into a “constitutional crisis.”
“There can be no higher stakes than this attempt to arrogate all power to the executive branch away from Congress and more important away from the American people,” Nadler told reporters after the vote.
“We’ve talked for a long time about approaching a constitutional crisis. We are now in it.”
Earlier on Wednesday, President Donald Trump invoked the legal principle of executive privilege to block the report’s release.
WATCH: House Judiciary Committee votes in favour of holding William Barr in contempt
According to White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, the president had “no other option.”
“Faced with Chairman Nadler’s blatant abuse of power, and at the attorney general’s request, the president has no other option than to make a protective assertion of executive privilege,” Sanders said in a statement.
-With a file from The Associated Press
Comments