House Says Formal Impeachment Inquiry Means It Can Get Mueller's Grand Jury Info
House lawyers wrote that some of the redacted material "clearly relate to Paul Manafort's grand jury testimony," including payments the former Trump campaign received from an ex-Ukrainian president.
September 30, 2019 at 09:23 PM
5 minute read
The House is tying allegations that President Donald Trump tried to get Ukraine to interfere in the upcoming 2020 elections to its legal efforts to obtain grand jury material redacted from special counsel Robert Mueller's report.
In a court filing made Monday night, days after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the House is formally launching an impeachment inquiry into Trump, House attorneys pushed back against the Department of Justice's previous assertions that it was unclear whether lawmakers were actually pursuing potential impeachment.
"This Court should likewise reject DOJ's attempt to claim for itself the power to declare when an impeachment inquiry is underway in the House. Under the Constitution's separation of powers, and the authority the Constitution vests in the House alone to structure its proceedings, that power is not DOJ's for the taking," the filing reads. "As Speaker Pelosi recently confirmed, the House is 'moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry.' And the Committee has made plain that the primary purpose of the disclosure it seeks is to aid that inquiry."
The House Judiciary Committee filed the lawsuit seeking grand jury material redacted from Mueller's report earlier this year, arguing the information is necessary in deciding whether to start impeachment proceedings against the president.
The House attorneys reiterated that point in their filing Monday. They pointed to past opinions from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that said an impeachment proceeding is one of the few situations in which a court can order the release of grand jury material, a decision the court underscored earlier this year.
The House counsels called DOJ's argument that the information can't be released "an extreme revision of the law," "unprecedented" and "alarming." They urged the D.C. District Court's Chief Judge Beryl Howell to reject it.
"As far as counsel is aware, the Executive Branch has never before objected to the disclosure of grand jury material to the House for an impeachment inquiry," they wrote.
The attorneys also said the grand jury material could reveal further details into recent allegations of misconduct by Trump surrounding Ukraine.
Trump urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to open an investigation into a political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, during a July phone call. That revelation was made in a whistleblower complaint that also alleged White House officials tried to cover up the call and conceal records of it
The House attorneys wrote that some of the grand jury information redacted from Mueller's report "clearly relate to Paul Manafort's grand jury testimony," including payments made to the former Trump campaign head by a former Ukrainian president.
That information would further the House Intelligence Committee's "own investigation of the President's efforts to press the government of Ukraine to investigate, among other things, 'Ukrainians who provided key evidence against … Paul Manafort' to assist the President's 2020 re-election bid," the filing reads.
The House lawyers also said that the grand jury material could show whether Trump made false statements in his written responses to questions from Mueller. Trump did not sit for an interview with the special counsel and his team.
"Those materials therefore have direct bearing on whether the President was untruthful, and further obstructed the Special Counsel's investigation, when in providing written responses to the Special Counsel's questions he denied being aware of any communications between his campaign and WikiLeaks," the filing states.
Monday's filing also marked the first appearance in the case for a pair of House attorneys.
Adam Grogg and Jonathan Schwartz both quietly joined House general counsel Douglas Letter's team in recent months, according to the general counsel's website.
Schwartz joined the team in June, while Grogg was hired last month. Grogg filed a notice of appearance in the grand jury materials lawsuit on Monday.
Schwartz spent more than three decades as an attorney for the State Department, including as a deputy legal adviser, according to the House counsel's website.
Grogg previously worked as a trial attorney for DOJ's civil division. He was most recently senior counsel at the anti-corruption nonprofit Democracy Forward Foundation.
Grogg has also appeared in the House's lawsuit seeking public testimony from former White House counsel Don McGahn. That case has also been tied to potential impeachment proceedings.
A spokesperson for Pelosi did not immediately return a request for comment.
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