Rand Paul Blocks Resolution To Release Mueller Report On The Grounds That Obama Should Be Investigated
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky blocked a resolution that would have called for the full release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation by demanding the release of documentation from President Obama’s White House.
On Thursday, Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, attempted to pass a non-binding measure that would have given the Senate full access to the Mueller report, according to The Hill.
“We still have not seen the report. I have urged the Department of Justice to release the report, and the administration should not delay in producing the report to Congress,” Klobuchar said.
Rand objected to the measure, saying that while “we all want transparency,” he didn’t want to do so unless communications between Obama-era officials like former CIA Director John Brennan, former FBI Director James Comey, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper were released as well.
“We need to know was there malfeasance, was there misuse of power, did President Obama’s administration get involved in an election to infiltrate the Trump campaign to trap them? … We need to know that,” he said. “What we need to discover and we do not yet know: Was President Obama involved?”
He added that the Mueller investigation was predicated on a lie, and that any release of the report should also include an investigation into “who the liars were.”
The resolution, called House Concurrent Resolution 24, passed the House 420-0 earlier this month, but so far, the Senate has refused to pass a similar measure. Republicans have blocked three other attempts to obtain the report, including an incidence when Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, blocked the resolution two weeks ago by demanding an investigation into Hillary Clinton as well.
As The Inquisitr reported, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also blocked the resolution saying that Attorney General William Barr should be allowed to go through the entire report and decide what to release to Congress.
Mueller released his report to the Department of Justice last week, and Barr published a four-page letter on Sunday summarizing the report.
Earlier, the Kentucky Republican demanded an investigation into the Obama administration, according to the Washington Examiner. Paul said that he believed Brennan insisted on including the Steele dossier in the intelligence community assessment (ICA) report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and called for Brennan to be forced to testify. James Clapper has contradicted this report, saying that the dossier wasn’t a part of the 2017 assessment.
Rand Paul: "Time for Congress to investigate" Obama https://t.co/X7wLn5xGpV pic.twitter.com/ioM7wAGZzF
— The Hill (@thehill) March 28, 2019
