"These are issues to be briefed by the parties (or others with cognizable legal claims and standing) and decided by the court — not Congress," a spokeswoman for Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said in a statement. | Zach Gibson/Getty Images Gowdy says courts must settle Trump transition team's spat with Mueller

A top Republican lawmaker on Sunday said the courts — not Congress — should resolve a new complaint from President Donald Trump's transition lawyers about the conduct of special counsel Robert Mueller's team.

"These are issues to be briefed by the parties (or others with cognizable legal claims and standing) and decided by the court — not Congress," a Gowdy spokeswoman said in a statement.


Trump's transition legal team wrote a letter to two congressional committees, including Gowdy's, on Saturday alleging that Mueller's team had inappropriately obtained thousands of transition emails that were housed on government servers. The transition team said it hoped the findings would be "useful in discharging your oversight responsibilities, ensuring the integrity of the special counsel's investigation." It also suggested new laws protecting future presidential transitions from unwanted disclosure of emails.

But Gowdy's spokeswoman said the issues raised by the transition were "specific legal issues" regarding claims of privileged information and that those matters belonged in court, not Congress.

The suggestion comes as legal experts and Democratic lawmakers cast doubt on the transition team claim that Mueller acted inappropriately when he obtained thousands of Trump transition communications directly from the General Services Administration — which housed the transition records — rather than seeking permission from transition officials themselves.

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The top Democrat on Gowdy's panel, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), argued Saturday that the Presidential Transition Act "simply does not support withholding transition team emails from criminal investigators."

John Bies, a lawyer in the Justice Department under former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder, told POLITICO that many of the Trump transition's legal claims don't pass muster. The transition, he said, argued that some communications are protected by "presidential communications privilege."

But Bies said that privilege almost certainly wouldn't apply during the transition, when Barack Obama was still president, because "there is only one president at a time."

Bies added that other claims of privilege would likely be overridden by the fact that the files are government documents.

"[T]he Office of the Special Counsel is part of the government and it would be highly unusual for one part of the federal government to seek to withhold materials from a criminal investigation by another part of the government," he said.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller's team rejected the notion that the team collected any emails improperly.

"When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner’s consent or appropriate criminal process,” he said in an early Sunday statement.

Darren Samuelsohn contributed to this report.

