“I don’t want the drama,” Rep. Trey Gowdy said. “I want the documents.” | Alex Brandon/AP DOJ, House GOP lurch toward confrontation in document fight 'We’re going to get compliance or the House of Representatives is going to use its full arsenal of constitutional weapons,' one Republican said.

The Justice Department and House Republicans appear to be careening toward their tensest confrontation yet in a long-running dispute over documents, with one GOP lawmaker warning that the House could seek to hold officials in contempt of Congress if the FBI and DOJ fail to comply with subpoenas for information.

House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said Sunday that Speaker Paul Ryan led a meeting Friday with FBI and DOJ officials in which lawmakers “went item by item” through outstanding subpoenas from the House intelligence and judiciary committees.


“And Paul made it very clear. There’s going to be action on the floor of the House this week if the FBI and DOJ do not comply with our subpoena request,” Gowdy said on "Fox News Sunday." “So [Deputy Attorney General] Rod Rosenstein, [FBI Director] Chris Wray, you were in the meeting. You understood him just as clearly as I did. We’re going to get compliance or the House of Representatives is going to use its full arsenal of constitutional weapons to gain compliance.”

Asked by host Chris Wallace whether that could include holding officials in contempt of Congress, Gowdy said yes.

“I don’t want the drama,” Gowdy said. “I want the documents.”

Lawmakers have demanded documents related to the FBI's investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server, the firing of FBI official Andrew McCabe and the surveillance starting in 2016 of a former campaign aide to President Donald Trump. It wasn’t clear exactly which documents provoked the current level of rancor, but Ryan’s participation in the meeting Friday showed that the fight has risen beyond the committees and could envelop the full House.

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Republicans have insisted the FBI and DOJ are stonewalling the requests, though the agencies say they are trying to diligently screen the documents. Democrats have accused their Republican counterparts of a political vendetta against the law enforcement agencies aimed at discrediting special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether any Trump associates helped.

Rosenstein, who has borne the brunt of Republicans’ frustration, oversees the Mueller investigation.

Spokespeople for the DOJ and FBI declined to comment Sunday.

Two people familiar with the meeting Friday said no specific options, such as contempt of Congress, were discussed. They said the point of the meeting was to make clear that there will be consequences if the Justice Department doesn’t comply with oversight requests.

The threat of House action was noteworthy coming from Gowdy, though, because the former federal prosecutor works closely with Ryan and his staff. He also does not always side with the Trump allies in the House, defending the FBI for sending an informant during the 2016 campaign to look into Trump's team's contacts with Russians, even as the president claimed the FBI had spied on his campaign.

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes said the documents were due this week, but he told Fox News on Sunday that he was not confident the agencies would comply.

The meeting Friday came after a series of huddles between lawmakers and law enforcement officials last week. House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte and the panel’s top Democrat, Jerry Nadler, met with Rosenstein and John Huber, a U.S. attorney assigned to oversee the document production. And the bipartisan leaders of the House and Senate met Thursday with DOJ and FBI officials.

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz also plans to meet Tuesday with House members for a classified briefing.

Lawmakers have several options when they believe an executive branch official is refusing to comply with a subpoena. They can cite the official for contempt of Congress and refer the issue to the Justice Department for prosecution. They can also authorize a civil lawsuit to enforce the subpoena in court.

A third option is for the House to invoke what's known as its inherent contempt power to have officials arrested. The last such move was by the Senate nearly a century ago.

In 2012, the GOP-led House had a showdown with Attorney General Eric Holder over records related to the gun-running investigation known as Operation Fast and Furious. The House passed two separate resolutions: one citing Holder for contempt and referring the issue to the Justice Department for prosecution, and another authorizing a House committee to sue.

Federal prosecutors rejected the criminal contempt referral, citing longstanding policy. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee sued Holder to demand access to the documents. The case dragged out until 2016, when a judge ruled that public disclosures had undercut the administration’s effort to resist the subpoena.

Although that ruling largely favored the House panel, it appealed in search of a complete win.

The litigation continues to this day, some six years later, although the Trump administration and the House struck a deal in March that could bring an end to the battle.

Josh Gerstein and Rachael Bade contributed to this report.



CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated which official would meet with House members in a classified briefing on Tuesday. The classified briefing will be held by Inspector General Michael Horowitz.