Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), a 2020 hopeful, is trying to grandstand to the public with a resolution to release the results of the Mueller investigation to the public, but Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is pouring cold water over her demand with a demand of his own.
According to The Hill, Paul will only agree to the public release of the details of the Mueller investigation if Democrats will also agree to release any information regarding former President Barack Obama’s backroom dealings during 2016 elections.
As the Hill reported, Klobuchar doesn’t seem to want that to happen:
“We still have not seen the report. I have urged the Department of Justice to release the report, and the administration should not delay in producing the report to Congress,” Klobuchar said.But Paul objected because Klobuchar wouldn’t agree to amend the nonbinding resolution to include provisions calling for the public release of communications between several Obama-era officials including former President Obama, former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan.“We need to know was there malfeasance, was there misuse of power, did President Obama’s administration get involved in an election to infiltrate the Trump campaign to trap them? … We need to know that,” he said. “What we need to discover and we do not yet know: Was President Obama involved?”
Paul is perfectly willing and able to stop a resolution in its tracks seeing as how for a resolution to pass it requires a yes vote from every senator. Democrats have now tried four times to pass this resolution, and it seems Paul is willing to resist as many times as is needed.
“I don’t care whether it’s a Democrat president or a Republican president, we should not waste the time of the entire country sending spies into campaigns, making false accusations and tying the country in knots for two years,” Paul said from the Senate floor.
“We will agree to see the Mueller report as long as the other side will agree to show us the communications that took place in deciding to promote this fake allegation against the president and whether there was misuse of their office,” he added. “We based this investigation on a lie, we should investigate who the liars were.”
Paul’s not alone. According to The Hill, Republicans have blocked the release, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.):
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) blocked the resolution for his second time on Wednesday.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) also blocked it earlier this month because Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) refused to amend it to include a provision calling on the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate alleged department misconduct in the handling of the investigation into 2016 Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton‘s email use and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications related to Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
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