WASHINGTON ��Democrats demanded Sunday that Attorney General William Barr provide Congress with unclassified access to special counsel Robert Mueller's report and its underlying evidence, saying they would take their demand to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said providing Congress with anything less would be equivalent to a "cover-up" and subvert attempts by the legislative branch of the government to hold the president accountable.
"Once you say that a president can not be indictable no matter the evidence as a matter of law, to then follow the principle that you can't then comment on the evidence or publicize it is to convert that into a cover-up," Nadler said on "Fox News Sunday."
"If that is the case, and they can't hold him accountable, the only institution that can hold a president accountable is Congress, and Congress, therefore, needs the evidence and the information," he said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is rallying Democratic lawmakers to deliver a unified message demanding Mueller's report be unclassified and made public in full, as congressional leaders await a summary of his findings from the Justice Department.
Pelosi and six committee leaders held what they called an emergency conference call Saturday with Democratic House members. The call provided no new insight on Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether anyone in President Donald Trump's campaign coordinated with that effort, according to lawmakers who participated.
The heads of the committees primarily involved in investigations of the Trump administration led the discussion, including Nadler and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The major thrust followed what Pelosi had earlier in the day outlined in a "Dear Colleague" letter �� that Congress must see the full report, and its underlying documents and findings.
"That report needs to be made public ASAP, so we can evaluate the body of evidence on the issue of conspiracy and look at why Bob Muller decided not to indict," Schiff said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "It is not going to be satisfactory for the attorney general of the Justice Department to brief eight of us, the so-called Gang of Eight, in a classified setting and say, 'OK, we discharged our obligation, we don't have to tell the rest of the country anything,"' he said. "That's not going to fly."
Democrats are attempting to keep pressure on Trump with their own investigations into his actions as president and his business dealings before taking office. But neither they nor Republicans know yet whether the conclusion of Mueller's investigation will accelerate or constrain further investigations.
Pelosi said transparency is even more urgent given Barr's letter Friday, in which the attorney general said he may advise certain lawmakers this weekend on the "principal conclusions" from Mueller's 22-month investigation.
"We are insisting that any briefings to any Committees be unclassified so that Members can speak freely about every aspect of the report and not be confined to what DOJ chooses to release publicly," Pelosi said in her letter.
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(Kasia Klimasinska, Chris Strohm, Anna Edgerton and Hailey Waller contributed to this report.)
