Robert Mueller, former special counsel for the U.S. Department of Justice, testifies before the House Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C., on July 24, 2019. Credit: Diego M. Radzinschi / ALM

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that the House Judiciary Committee can obtain grand jury information redacted from former special counsel Robert Mueller's report.

The ruling is a significant win for the House, after it suffered a recent loss in its bid to compel testimony from former White House counsel Don McGahn that has rippled into its other court battles.

Judge Judith Rogers wrote in the court's majority opinion affirming the district court that a Senate impeachment trial is a judicial proceeding, and that the committee established a particularized need for the redacted materials, pointing to the Constitution granting the House the "sole power of impeachment."

Rogers rejected the DOJ's claims that past circuit rulings about grand jury information being released during an impeachment inquiry were incorrectly decided, calling the Justice Department's arguments "foreclosed by our precedent" and "unpersuasive."

"It is only the president's categorical resistance and the department's objection that are unprecedented," she wrote, referring to courts' consistent past rulings to provide grand jury information to Congress for the purposes of impeachment.

"The constitutional text confirms that a Senate impeachment trial is a judicial proceeding," she wrote, quoting the Constitution and the Federalist Papers.

"So understood, the term 'judicial proceeding' encompasses a Senate impeachment trial over which the chief justice of the Supreme Court presides and the senators constitute the jury," Rogers continued.

She further ruled that the DOJ's "contrary interpretation" of the grand jury exemption rule "would raise as many separation-of-powers problems as it might solve."

The DOJ "ignores that courts have historically provided grand jury records to the House pursuant to Rule 6(e) and that its interpretation of the rule would deprive the House of its ability to access such records in future impeachment investigations," Rogers wrote. "Where the department is legally barred from handing over grand jury materials without court authorization, judicial restraint does not empower Congress; it impedes it."

And she differentiated this case from the House's subpoena fights, writing, "Because the Department of Justice is simply the custodian of the grand jury materials at issue however, the instant case is unlike inter-branch disputes where Congress issued subpoenas and directed Executive Branch officials to testify and produce their relevant documents."

Judge Thomas Griffith concurred while Judge Neomi Rao dissented.

Rao, in her dissent, noted the House has already passed two articles of impeachment without the grand jury information, and that the Senate voted to acquit President Donald Trump at trial.

"In light of these circumstances, I would remand to the district court to consider in the first instance whether the committee can continue to demonstrate that its inquiry is preliminary to an impeachment proceeding and that it has a 'particularized need' for disclosure of the grand jury records," Rao wrote.

The judge wrote she believed the House Judiciary Committee had to show standing in the case, because it was requesting a court to order one branch of government to hand over materials to another branch of government, which raises Article III issues.

"Waving the banner of grand jury tradition is not enough to overcome the fundamental principle of separation of powers that a court may order action by the executive branch only at the behest of a party with standing," Rao wrote. And she pointed to the circuit's recent McGahn ruling in saying the committee did not have standing.

In a concurring opinion, Griffith wrote he understood Rao's "concern that ordering the Executive Branch to provide grand jury records to Congress could make us a tool of the House in the exercise of its 'sole power of impeachment.'"

"But, as gatekeepers of grand jury information, we cannot sit this one out," he wrote. "The House isn't seeking our help in eliciting executive-branch testimony or documents. Instead, it's seeking access to grand jury records whose disclosure the district court, by both tradition and law, controls."

Griffith authored the majority opinion in the D.C. Circuit's ruling on McGahn's testimony, which threw out the suit over standing issues. The House has since filed a petition for an en banc rehearing of the case.

The three-judge panel heard arguments in the case in early January, after the House voted to impeach Trump but before the Senate trial began. The Republican-held Senate has since acquitted the president on both articles of impeachment, for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, ending the proceedings.

The House Judiciary Committee began its legal bid for the grand jury materials last year, early on in its impeachment inquiry.

U.S. District Chief Judge Beryl Howell ruled in October that the committee could access the materials as part of its impeachment inquiry, one of the few instances a court has found grand jury information can be shared.

Justice Department attorney Mark Freeman argued to the D.C. Circuit panel in January that impeachment is not a judicial proceeding, meaning that the materials could not be handed over to House Democrats.

Instead, he said Congress should pass a statute directly saying that lawmakers can access grand jury information as part of an impeachment proceeding.

House general counsel Douglas Letter pointed to prior court rulings, like that in Watergate, which found that grand jury materials can be reviewed in relation to impeachment.

And he said, echoing a brief filed by his office days earlier, that new information from the testimony could potentially lead to further articles of impeachment against Trump.

The findings from Mueller's report did not figure prominently in the articles against Trump, which homed in on allegations of wrongdoing in pushing Ukraine to investigate Trump's political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.

Read the opinion:

Read more:

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DC Circuit Throws Out Lawsuit for Don McGahn's Testimony, in Major Loss for House