The House Judiciary Committee announced Tuesday that next week it will hear public testimony from a Justice Department antitrust official and from a former member of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team.
I’m always on Nadler’s case, so I’m delighted to offer congratulations. Not that he loses/gains any sleep over it.
It is unclear whether the Department will take action to block or limit the testimony of the two current DOJ officials.
3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .
Let this be known as the Summer of the Whistleblower…
I, too, offer congratulations…
OT…While I was typing, I missed one letter and typed “goo”.
Maybe I was subliminally thinking of Trump in his play pen (the WH) 
Strain your ears and you will hear the sound of a fart in a hurricane.
Admirable yet quaint. Then again, I guess the House needs to do something these days …
This could really be explosive testimony, especially when Zelinsky talks about the Stone sentencing…he will know if there was any interference and who led it, though he may not know how the order originated with. This may also be setting up a theme for the campaign, DoJ not being independent is going to bother a lot of Americans, if the Democrats can lay out how Trump and Barr have turned the DoJ into a campaign arm of the Republican party a lot of independents will be turned off. And, it’s likely that the Republicans will take actions through DoJ that just confirm that, so this is laying a marker for the next five months.
TPM says:
It is unclear whether the Department will take action to block or limit the testimony of the two current DOJ officials.
Perhaps not completely unclear.
Anyway:
Joining them for the hearing is former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Donald Ayer, who was Barr’s deputy when Barr led the George H.W. Bush Justice Department.
Ayer is a long-time Republican lawyer, now at Jones Day. He wrote about Barr recently in The Atlantic, from which:
The fundamental problem is that [Barr] does not believe in the central tenet of our system of government—that no person is above the law. In chilling terms, Barr’s own words make clear his long-held belief in the need for a virtually autocratic executive who is not constrained by countervailing powers within our government under the constitutional system of checks and balances.
Indeed, given our national faith and trust in a rule of law no one can subvert, it is not too strong to say that Bill Barr is un-American. And now, from his perch as attorney general, he is in the midst of a root-and-branch attack on the core principles that have guided our justice system, and especially our Department of Justice, since the 1970s.
Great Post
This will, for many of us, be good to hear the story these individuals have to say. For many of us this will be one more example of Trump’s unfitness for office. But sadly I fear, like the impeachment journey, for most (and for justice) this will be a road to nowhere.
I agree with you.
However, I qualify my agreement with Trump’s re-election (or not). Because when Trump loses, Nadler will be in the Driver’s Seat for a great many things, of which this is the beginning.
Bill Barr will have to be held to account for his misdeeds, and I believe that his misdoings will reverberate for years, in terms of a reckoning.
Then there’s Pompeo…and there is a rogue’s gallery following him.
By whom?
Cheney, Bush et al walked away from the Iraq War disaster without any reckoning.
Anything that keeps Barr busy between now and November is welcome – the less time and energy he has to dismantle democracy, the more likely we can rebuild it.
I think that this is a thoughtfully laid trap for barr and his immediate cronies. If the testimony results (as it quite possibly should) in a criminal referral, DoJ has the alternatives of either engaging in an obviously corrupt act by squelching the referral (which can be prosecuted by an incoming AG) or appointing a special prosecutor, in which case destroying the past several years of inconvenient evidence is going to become rather more difficult.
(Yes, I’m assuming a new administration in January, because otherwise, well…)
You’d be surprised if it leads to Barr being impeached?
The timing is difficult on that, unless the articles are already mostly drafted and this public hearing is just the trigger. But I think that a criminal referral, if made, might well include Barr.
Republicans on the Judiciary Committee can invite a witness of their own but have not yet selected one, according to a committee aide. https
And,
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The interesting thing about this is that Aaron Zelinsky (who is still a DOJ employee) is testifying abt Stone, not Jonathan Kravis, who is not
How much energy the Dotard expends trying to stop this will be an indication of how much he cares about the optics as viewed by anyone other than his base. In the past, his concern has been infinitesimally small.
Of course they will be blocked from testifying. Count on it. Will they resign with honor or be cowed by Big Bully Billy Barr?