After Attorney General William Barr decided to skip out on a House Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday, congressional Democrats began plotting out next steps to compel the DOJ head to speak — or to threaten his job if he doesn’t.

Amid Barr’s ongoing defense of his bungled handling of the release of the Mueller report — which special counsel Robert Mueller even criticized — Democrats in both the House and Senate have begun calling for Barr to be compelled to testify, removed from office, or potentially held in contempt of Congress.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said on Thursday that the committee “may issue a subpoena” in order to get Barr to testify.

Barr protested the committee’s plans to allow committee lawyers, in addition to members, to question the attorney general. A spokesperson for the Justice Department called the plans to include counsel questioning “unprecedented and unnecessary,” even though it’s a fairly common practice. Congressional Republicans used a lawyer just last year to question Christine Blasey Ford, a woman who accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault.

However, even if House Democrats do issue a subpoena to Barr, the attorney general may simply ignore it, as he and his colleagues have done with a similar congressional subpoena demanding the release of the full, unredacted version of the Mueller report. Nadler said obtaining the unredacted report is the committee’s “first priority.”


But that subpoena has languished in the face of DOJ intransigence. While Nadler has said that the House committee will “continue to negotiate for access to the full report,” Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd wrote a letter to Nadler on Wednesday refusing to comply with the request.

According to Boyd, the House Judiciary Committee “lacks any legitimate legislative purpose for seeking the complete investigative files, and processing your requests would impose a significant burden on the department.”

“This is not a legitimate use of congressional investigative authority,” Boyd wrote. The assistant attorney general also claimed that Barr’s decision to release the redacted report was somehow an “extraordinary accommodation.”

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Given the clear lack of willingness from Barr or his office to comply with any Mueller-related subpoenas, congressional Democrats have already hinted at possibly holding Barr in contempt of Congress.


According to Politico, Nadler has already said that he may move to hold Barr in contempt as early as Monday. “We will have no choice but to move quickly to hold the attorney general in contempt if he stalls or fails to negotiate in good faith,” Nadler said.

Nadler just said the administration will NOT comply with his demands to get the full Mueller report; says negotiations will go on for 1-2 days before next steps. Then he says they will move to hold Barr in contempt if he doesn’t comply. “He’s trying to blackmail the committee.” https://t.co/QrajysHOtg — Manu Raju (@mkraju) May 1, 2019

The move to hold Barr in contempt wouldn’t be unprecedented. During the Obama administration, a GOP-led House voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for Holder’s failure to hand over documents pertaining to the so-called “Fast and Furious” scandal.

Holding a similar vote in the current House — the method with which Nadler would be able to cite Barr with contempt of Congress — would be a significant escalation in the ongoing contretemps between Congress and the White House.

Still, the move to hold Barr in contempt would be largely symbolic. Not only would the citation of contempt expire once the current Congress ends its session in early 2021, but current enforcement mechanisms surrounding contempt proceedings go through the office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia — an office that reports directly to Barr. (There are other methods for compelling witnesses to testify, such as having the House sergeant-at-arms physically detain the witness, but these methods haven’t been used in nearly a century.)


Congress could also pursue a lawsuit against Barr in regards to holding him in contempt, which could eventually see a judge force Barr to testify. Previous similar efforts, however, have dragged on for years. For instance, in 2007 a Democrat-led Congress filed suit against then-White House counsel Harriet Miers, who was then working in the George W. Bush administration. However, the case dragged out through the end of Bush’s presidency and into the Obama administration, which eventually settled the case.

There is another option: impeach Barr.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) said this week that if Barr doesn’t resign first, “he should be facing impeachment proceedings.” And while a number of candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination have already called for Barr’s resignation, at least two — Julian Castro and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) — believe Congress should begin impeachment proceedings against Barr.

Whichever path the Democrats choose moving forward, it’s clear that Barr’s time in the spotlight is far from over. And while he was able to skip out on Wednesday’s hearing, that doesn’t mean he can dodge the consequences of his actions — and his unrepentant defense of Trump — much longer. But whether he’s able to keep his job while doing so remains to be seen.