Congressional Democrats vowed Friday to keep investigating President Trump, his family, and associates despite Special Counsel Robert Mueller wrapping up his Russia investigation with no new indictments.
Attorney General William Barr notified key congressional leaders in a letter Friday evening that Mueller finished his investigation, adding that a summary of the probe’s findings may be provided to lawmakers as soon as this weekend.
Both
the investigation's end and the lack of any new indictments struck at
the core of the Democrats’ messaging for the last two years that led
people to believe the Mueller probe would uncover evident collusion
between the Trump campaign and Russia.
This
prompted House Democrats to somewhat downplay the Mueller probe and
suggested that the left-leaning lawmakers themselves might take on the
job of trying to prove collusion, not ruling out the possibility of
Mueller being asked or subpoenaed to testify before congressional
committees.
“If the Justice Department doesn't release the whole
report or tries to keep parts of it secret, we will certainly subpoena
the parts of the report and we will reserve the right to call Mueller to
testify before the committee or to subpoena him,” House Judiciary
Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said in a statement.
Nadler
is leading an investigation into “alleged obstruction of justice,
public corruption, and other abuses of power by President Trump,” a
probe he announced earlier this month and has requested documents and
records from 81 individuals and entities connected, in some way, to the
president.
So far only a fraction of those targeted have responded
or complied with the document requests by the Nadler-imposed deadline
of March 18.
Democrats in the House will also ask multiple
executive branch agencies to preserve the information they gave to the
special counsel, the Washington Post reported.
The
Democratic chairs of the six House committees investigating the Trump
administration and their Senate Democratic counterparts reportedly have
penned a letter that will be sent to the Department of Justice, FBI and
White House Counsel’s Office, and other agencies in an effort to
preserve records in the event of the committees requesting for them.
House
Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.,made similar
comments to Nadler and rejected reports that no more Mueller
indictments are coming.
“If necessary, we will call Bob Mueller or
others before our committee, I would imagine the judiciary committee
may call the attorney general if necessary,” Schiff told CNN.
This
is not the first time Schiff dismissed the importance of the Mueller
report. Earlier this month, he insisted that the question of whether
Trump was “compromised by a foreign power” would end only when Schiff's
panel's investigation ends.
“Our predominant concern on my
committee is: Was this president, is this president, compromised by a
foreign power?,” Schiff said during an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning
Joe.”
“Well,
if there’s insufficient evidence in the Mueller report and we’re not
able to produce sufficient evidence in our own investigation," Schiff
said, "that ends the inquiry."