U.S. Department of Justice attorneys appealed to the Supreme Court Monday. As DOJ lawyers petitioned the court to overturn a lower court decision granting House Democrats access to redacted grand jury materials from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.
The Hill reported:
The Monday filing serves as the Trump administration’s formal appeal of a March order to hand over secret transcripts and exhibits that Democratic leaders of the House Judiciary Committee initially sought as part of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump.
The justices previously granted the administration’s request to halt the disclosure order, issued by a divided three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, from taking effect to allow time for an appeal.vIn its filing, DOJ lawyers urged the justices to take up the case and to prevent an unwarranted breach of grand jury secrecy.
Counsel for the DOJ told, “In light of the national prominence of this grand-jury investigation, the separation-of-powers concerns raised by the decision below, and the potential damage that decision could inflict on ‘the proper functioning of our grand jury system,’ this Court’s review is warranted.”
Federal District Court Judge Reggie Walton of Washington, D.C. had accused Attorney General William Barr of misrepresenting its findings in the days before it was submitted to Congress last year.
As he declared, “The inconsistencies between Attorney General Barr’s statements, made at a time when the public did not have access to the redacted version of the Mueller Report to assess the veracity of his statements, and portions of the redacted version of the Mueller Report that conflict with those statements cause the Court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller Report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller Report to the contrary.”
In addition, “These circumstances generally, and Attorney General Barr’s lack of candor specifically, call into question Attorney General Barr’s credibility” as well as the DOJ’s arguments in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.” The high court has their hands full with all that is going on.
