WASHINGTON – If Wednesday’s vote in the House Judiciary Committee to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress passes, Democrats will still be several steps away from seeing the full Mueller report.

First the full House will have to vote on it.

It will probably pass the House, one source said, though the Democrats haven’t held a caucus-wide discussion on it yet, as they won’t officially be back on the job until Tuesday, another Democratic source cautioned.

If it passes – and only one house of Congress needs to approve of a criminal contempt charge – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would turn the matter over to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Jessie Liu. It could also go to the broader Justice Department, which Barr runs, or to the courts.

Liu hasn’t always pleased conservatives. She pulled her nomination for the No. 3 spot at the Justice Department after Senate Republicans complained about her being tied to a judicial group that had opposed Justice Samuel Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court. But she also said she supported Alito.

“The Justice Department isn’t under any obligation to go to court,” explained Jamil Jaffer, the founder of George Mason Law School’s National Security Institute and a former lawyer for George W. Bush. “And so Congress then has to decide what it’s going to do.”

A similar scenario played out in June 2012 when Attorney General Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress by a Republican-led House. The Obama-run Justice Department decided against prosecuting Holder for contempt of Congress and a federal court refused to hold him in contempt.

If the same happens in this case, Democrats could sue Barr for failing to release the unredacted documents.

“The Justice Department would reject the request, then they would have to go into a court, then there would have to be court proceedings and then a court decision,” said George Washington University law professor Paul Schiff Berman. “The Holder one ended up going on for over a year,” Berman noted.

Democrats have a much easier way to get the full, unredacted Mueller report: they could open up impeachment proceedings, legal experts said.

“If they began impeachment proceedings – the Democrats control the House, they could begin them tomorrow if they wanted to – they’re probably likely going to get access to most of it,” Jaffer said.

Berman agreed, especially if Democrats went to court and were told that they needed a “real legal proceeding” in order to get the full Mueller report.

“Ironically, it provides more of a potential justification for at least formally opening impeachment proceedings,” Berman said. “So that it would satisfy the legal requirement.”