Supreme Court to decide whether House Democrats can get Mueller grand jury docs

The Justice Department has said impeachment does not qualify as a judicial proceeding. In court papers submitted to the top court, Solicitor General Noel Francisco argued that the Democrats’ position raised significant separation of powers issues. Francisco announced last month that he would be leaving the Justice Department effective Friday. 

In urging the justices not to review the matter, Douglas Letter, an attorney for House Democrats, wrote that “DOJ has things backwards.”

“The only threat to Congress’s constitutional prerogatives comes from DOJ’s newly minted position, which would categorically deny Congress access to grand-jury material for use in impeachments — thereby treating a core constitutional function less favorably than routine civil and criminal litigation,” Letter wrote. 

In a statement on Thursday, Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said Trump and Attorney General William Barr “are continuing to try to run out the clock on any and all accountability.  While I am confident their legal arguments will fail, it is now all the more important for the American people to hold the President accountable at the ballot box in November.”

A spokesperson for  the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The case is Department of Justice v. House Committee on the Judiciary, No. 19-1328.

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/02/supreme-court-to-decide-whether-house-democrats-can-get-mueller-grand-jury-docs.html