President Donald Trump's top White House lawyer on Wednesday told a leading Democrat that Congress does not have the right to "pursue an unauthorized 'do-over' of" special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.
The lawyer, Pat Cipollone made that claim in a 12-page letter that pushed back — very hard — against the House Judiciary Committee's demands for testimony from current and past Trump administration officials, as well as for documents.
A senior White House official later accused the committee of engaging in "illegitimate oversight attempts."
Cipollone did not reject all of the Judiciary Committee's demands outright — although he did so in some cases. But even as he urged the Judiciary Committee to "narrow the sweeping scope" for each of its requests to address Cipollone's concerns about them, he strongly urged the panel drop its probe altogether.
"The appropriate course is for the Committee to discontinue the inquiry," Cipollone wrote Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-NY.
"Unfortunately, it appears that you have already decided to press ahead with a duplicative investigation, including by issuing subpoenas, to replow the same ground the Special Counsel has already covered."
"As a first step, the Committee has served document requests to 81 agencies, entities, and individuals believed to have information relevant to the investigation."
The Judiciary Committee more recently voted to recommend that Attorney General William Barr be held in contempt for failing to appear before the panel to discuss the Mueller report and its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible obstruction of justice by Trump.
Cipollone's letter called the rush to recommend a contempt finding for Barr "legally indefensible" because the Judiciary Committee has failed to lay out "any proper legislative purpose" for pursuing issues that Mueller already investigated.
"Congressional investigations are intended to obtain information to aid in evaluating potential legislation, not to harass political opponents or to pursue an unauthorized 'do-over' of exhaustive law enforcement investigations conducted by the Department of Justice," Cipollone wrote.
The letter did not say that Trump was formally exercising executive privilege over materials and testimony that Nadler has requested.
Nadler fired back at Cipollone's letter, saying "Our investigation into this as well as other troubling conduct by this Administration will continue."
The White House has previously objected to a variety of requests for information from Democratic lawmakers on the grounds that those requests do not serve a legitimate legislative purpose.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin recently refused to hand over six years of Trump's tax returns to the House Ways and Means Committee, in part for that reason.
A senior White House official told reporters Wednesday that, "The problem is the chairman [Nadler] doesn't like the results of the investigation" by Mueller.
The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, accused Nadler of trying to orchestrate a "show trial" and "political theater" for Trump administration officials.
"Does anyone doubt that Chairman Nadler already has his own conclusions about what happened back in 2016?" the official asked, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
If Nadler wants to get the documents and testimony he has asked for, the official said, he "has to do a better job of laying out a legitimate legislative purpose for what he's doing."
"It's not really the president's fault if the Congress is engaging in illegitimate oversight attempts," the official said. "The president is not acting in an imperial fashion, it seems to me Congress [and Nadler] are acting imperiously ... by setting forth demands for docs that are secret, that are privileged."
Read White House Counsel Pat Cipollone's letter to House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler:
from Top News & Analysis https://cnb.cx/2WcXID3
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