Speaker Nancy Pelosi Plans Monday Meeting, Saying ‘Congress Will Not Be Silent’ On Mueller Report
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi scheduled a meeting with fellow House Democrats to take place on Monday immediately following the holiday weekend to discuss the next steps in their response to the release of Robert Mueller’s report on his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, HuffPost reports.
The conference was requested via a letter to her Democratic colleagues, in which Pelosi characterized the Justice Department’s release of the report as “disrespectfully late” and “selectively redacted.”
“The Caucus is scheduling a conference call for Monday to discuss this grave matter, which is as soon as our analysis and this Holy Season’s religious traditions allow,” Pelosi said, before adding “Congress will not be silent.”
In a series of tweets on Thursday, the speaker had called out Attorney General William Barr on his handling of the report, claiming that the conclusions initially presented by the attorney general prior to the release of the redacted report were inconsistent with what was actually within the document when it was ultimately revealed, specifically on the issue of President Donald Trump’s potential obstruction of justice.
Pelosi issued the tweets, and her letter to Democrats, while traveling in Ireland as part of an unrelated trip to the United Kingdom. Her statements came following Barr’s press conference, in which he again summarized his interpretation of the report before later that day making public the redacted version.
In her letter, Pelosi lays out a number of concerns about the redacted report, saying in particular that it “appears to directly undercut” Barr’s previous assertion that Trump had not in fact committed obstruction of justice. She also expressed her concern about “several alarming findings,” including some which “explicitly state that the President’s campaign took actions with an expectation that ‘it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.'”
Pelosi’s meeting could cover any number of topics on Monday, with many options for next moves continuing to circulate among Democratic leadership and debated in the media. Pursuit of the unredacted report has been a frequently-stated priority, while more aggressive members of the caucus have begun to advocate for initiating articles of impeachment against Trump.
In addition, House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler expressed similar sentiments via Twitter, indicating that, in Mueller’s own words, the report does not explicitly exonerate Trump on the issue of obstruction.
This is exactly why we need to hear directly from Special Counsel Mueller and receive the full, unredacted report with the underlying evidence. pic.twitter.com/8nqoUWHjpI
— Rep. Nadler (@RepJerryNadler) April 18, 2019
Nadler has been a strong voice among Democrats in favor of giving Congress access to Mueller’s full report, without redaction.
