Trump brokers meeting between DOJ leaders, congressional Republicans to settle standoff over subpoena stonewalling

By Dan Calabrese —— Bio and Archives May 23, 2018

Comments | Print This | Subscribe | Email Us

I don’t really see what settlement there needs to be, other than, “Department of Justice complies fully with congressional subpoenas.” But you have to say this: Every time the DOJ offers an excuse for why it can’t comply, the excuse is quickly revealed to be utter nonsense. I guess if we give them a little more rope to hang themselves again, no harm, as long as we eventually get the information.

What will this accomplish exactly?

Key congressional leaders are set to meet Thursday with federal law enforcement and intelligence bosses amid a slow-motion standoff over secret documents in the Russia investigation, the White House said on Tuesday. Press secretary Sarah Sanders said that the White House had brokered a meeting at which two key Republican chairman would hear from the leaders of the Justice Department, FBI and the intelligence community following weeks’ worth of requests for the classified material. No one from the White House is scheduled to be present, Sanders said — nor, at this point, are any senators or any Democrats, in defiance of a request from the Senate minority leader. The members of Congress set to attend are Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the chairman of the House intelligence committee, and Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Oversight Committee. Those scheduled to attend from the executive branch are Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Ed O’Callaghan, Sanders said.

Trump had his own meeting on Monday with Rosenstein and Wray, and got them to agree to look into the mole the FBI apparently planted with his campaign in 2016. Maybe as part of that meeting, Rosenstein and Wray raised issues they had with the subpoenas, and Trump decided he could set up a solution to these problems just by getting all the parties together. But the fundamental problem here is that the DOJ has never had any reason not to comply fully with the subpoenas. They keep complaining about compromising sources and methods, but a) the documents they’ve turned over kicking and screaming so far have not done that; and b) all committee members have the highest-level security clearances. What we’ve learned so far is that the FBI relied almost exclusively on a campaign document paid for by the Hillary campaign to justify wiretapping Carter Page, after they tried very hard to hide that fact. Now the question is whether the FBI really planted a mole within the Trump campaign, and whether Barack Obama ordered this done for political purposes. Because if he misused the FBI for a purpose like that, well, you know what it is. I don’t know what Gowdy and Nunes are going to say to Rosenstein and Wray in this meeting that are going to persuade them to be any more cooperative, but I guess we’ll see.