On MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show Wednesday evening, Rep. Jerrold Nadler called the White House a “lawless administration” for its blanket refusal to comply with Congressional subpoenas.
Nadler’s comments came on the heels of a vote in the House Judiciary Committee earlier in the day—where Nadler is the chairman—in which it voted 24–16 to hold Attorney General Bill Barr in contempt. This rare rebuke from Congress came after Barr refused to testify to the committee last week and failed to comply with committee requests for documents related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of links between Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.
Calling his committee’s vote a defense of the country’s constitutional form of government, Nadler told Maddow: “This is a lawless administration. It is denying the American people the information they need by defying all subpoenas. It’s the first administration you’ve ever seen where they say we’ll deny all subpoenas from Congress, whether it’s on the Mueller investigation or on security clearances or in anything else. They defy the law. …We cannot have a situation where the president becomes a king or a dictator. I mean, the American people understand that nobody, not the president, nobody may be above the law.”
The committee’s contempt vote—the full House will vote on the measure in the coming weeks—was another step in an escalating fight between
You can watch above, via MSNBC.
[image via screengrab]