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WASHINGTON (AP) – The Justice Department says President Donald Trump has exerted executive privilege over the full Mueller report and other investigative records that had been subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee.
Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd says Wednesday that the Justice Department is also ending its negotiations with the committee.
Boyd says the committee’s chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, scheduled an “unnecessary contempt vote.”
Attorney General William Barr released a redacted version of Mueller’s report to the public last month, but Democrats want to see the full document, along with underlying evidence.
The Justice Department has rejected that demand, but allowed a handful of congressional leaders to view a less redacted version.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler says President Donald Trump’s assertion of executive privilege over special counsel Robert Mueller’s report is a clear escalation of his administration’s “blanket defiance” of Congress.
Nadler made the comments ahead of a committee vote to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress. The committee is moving to hold Barr in contempt after the Justice Department rejected House Democrats’ demands for a fuller version of Mueller’s report and other documents.
Executive privilege is the president’s power to keep information from the courts, Congress and the public to protect the confidentiality of the Oval Office decision-making process. Asserting privilege would allow Trump to withhold the Mueller materials from Congress.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Trump had to assert privilege due to Nadler’s “blatant abuse of power.”
