Democrats Call for Ex-Attorneys General Barr, Sessions to Testify--2nd Update
June 11 2021 - 2:16PM
Dow Jones News
By Siobhan Hughes and Sadie Gurman
WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.)
and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D., Ill.)
called for former attorneys general Jeff Sessions and William Barr
to testify before Congress under oath.
The request followed revelations on Thursday that the Trump
Justice Department secretly sought records from Apple Inc. related
to communications by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee
and their aides and relatives.
"If they refuse, they are subject to being subpoenaed and
compelled to testify under oath," the two senators said in a
statement. "In addition, the Justice Department must provide
information and answers to the Judiciary Committee, which will
vigorously investigate this abuse of power."
The senators also said that other officials who were involved
must testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee under oath. "We
expect that our Republican colleagues will join us in getting to
the bottom of this serious matter," they said.
Apple in May notified individuals associated with the committee
that the Justice Department had issued grand-jury subpoenas for
their information in February 2018, a committee official said. The
committee immediately contacted the Justice Department for
clarification and additional information, the official said, adding
that the department informed the committee last month that the
matter had been closed.
At the time of the subpoenas, then-President Donald Trump and
officials in his administration, including Mr. Sessions, were
trying to locate the source of leaks about contacts between Russia
and figures in Mr. Trump's 2016 election campaign. Mr. Trump's
second attorney general, Mr. Barr, renewed the leak investigations
after taking office in 2019, directing a federal prosecutor from
New Jersey to work on about a half-dozen cases, according to a
person familiar with the matter. The cases had languished under Mr.
Barr's predecessors, and the prosecutor was directed to then brief
top officials, a person familiar with the matter said.
On Friday Mr. Barr said he hadn't been aware of cases in which
there were subpoenas related to lawmaker's communications. "I
didn't recall that case," Mr. Barr said. "Whatever steps were
taken, were taken before I arrived."
The Justice Department occasionally investigates and charges
members of Congress in corruption investigations, but legal experts
on national security issues said there is no precedent for
investigating members for leaking national security information.
Most rules governing the handling of classified information are
established under a president's executive authority, and are not
laws, and little precedent exists for whether members of Congress
-- as officers of a co-equal branch of government -- must
comply.
"To my knowledge, no member of Congress has ever been prosecuted
for unauthorized disclosures of classified information," said
Bradley Moss, a national security attorney in Washington.
"Any indictment would be fraught with constitutional
implications," Mr. Moss said. "There'd be fights over separation of
powers. There'd be fights over abuse of authority."
Members of Congress also have immunity from prosecution based on
actions taken in their official capacity in Congress, under the
U.S. Constitution. In 1971, then-Sen. Mike Gravel entered the
highly-classified Pentagon Papers into the congressional record --
an action that sparked a federal grand jury investigation, but no
charges were brought against the senator.
One Senate Republican would need to join Democrats in voting to
issue a subpoena because of the 50-50, evenly divided chamber and
Democrats don't have the power to unilaterally issue subpoenas. "I
am somewhat doubtful that we would get a Republican, but it's a
possibility -- I wouldn't rule it out," said Sen. Richard
Blumenthal (D., Conn.), a member of the Senate Judiciary
Committee.
The committee includes Sen. Ben Sasse (R., Neb.), who earlier
this year voted to convict then-President Trump of inciting an
insurrection on Jan. 6 and also voted to create a commission to
investigate that day's attack on the Capitol, which blocked due to
opposition by other Senate Republicans.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee
Chairman Adam Schiff have called for an investigation into the
Justice Department's pursuit of the communications data, first
reported by the New York Times. It reported that the records of at
least a dozen people connected to the panel in 2017 and early 2018,
including those of Mr. Schiff, were seized in the probe.
Reports of the subpoenas follow earlier revelations that the
Justice Department under Mr. Barr subpoenaed the records of
reporters at several news organizations including the Washington
Post, the New York Times and CNN.
The Justice Department, which has said it would no longer seek
records of reporters' contacts when investigating government leaks
of sensitive information, declined to comment.
The House Intelligence Committee has continued to seek
additional information from the Justice Department, the official
said, adding that "DOJ has not been forthcoming in a timely manner,
including on questions such as whether the investigation was
properly predicated and whether it only targeted Democrats."
Byron Tau contributed to this article.
Write to Siobhan Hughes at siobhan.hughes@wsj.com and Sadie
Gurman at sadie.gurman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 11, 2021 14:14 ET (18:14 GMT)
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