Attorney General Jeff Sessions listens to a question on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, June 13, 2017, as he testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing about his role in the firing of James Comey, his Russian contacts during the campaign and his decision to recuse from an investigation into possible ties between Moscow and associates of President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
It is no secret that the working relationship between the House Intelligence, Oversight and Judiciary Committees is strained. All three committee chairmen have demanded documents from either Department of Justice or the FBI and in case after case the requests have only been complied with after a political battle.
The House Intelligence Committee Chairman is again locked in a fight with Justice. He’d requested specific information but instead of information he got a letter from Stephen Boyd, assistant attorney general for legislative affairs telling him to FOAD.
Last week Chairman @DevinNunes sent a subpoena to the DOJ with a deadline of Thursday. Once again, the DOJ ignored the request and will not comply.
Same story–more obstruction. Enough is enough. It's time to hold DOJ officials in contempt of Congress.
— Mark Meadows (@MarkMeadows) May 6, 2018
This morning Nunes was on the Sunday edition of Fox and Friends and he talked about his frustration and the direction he’s thinking of heading. (The video is cued up for the beginning of the talk about Sessions.)
“On Thursday we discovered that they are not going to comply with our subpoena. The only thing left to do is we have to move quickly to hold the attorney general of the United States in contempt and that is what I will press for this week.”
It is unclear how much support Nunes has for this exercise but I suspect he didn’t make this statement without having significant support lined up. To date Nunes is batting a thousand in his encounters with Justice so it is unlikely he’d want to put this record in jeopardy. As Sessions doesn’t seem to be involved in much at Justice, my guess is that this is a way of getting Sessions’ attention and have him bring smoke on Rosenstein and Wray. Ultimately, as I’ve said before, these battles weaken Rosenstein. They deprive him of allies in the White House because no one wants to have to constantly defend a subordinate. His string of losses reveal him to be a man without clout. Everyone knows Trump would love to fire him. Eventually, these needless and bloody and embarrassing defeats will cause him to be fired. When that happens he has no one to blame but himself.
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