House Democrats have something up their sleeve against William Barr
On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee voted to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for illegally trying to cover up Donald Trump’s scandals. All that’s left is for the full House to hold a contempt vote and make it official. This vote could take place tomorrow if the House Democrats wanted it to, as it’s essentially a formality. But wait, because something else is going on here.
House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler appeared on the Rachel Maddow show on Wednesday night, and stated that the full House vote to hold Barr in contempt will take place in the coming weeks. Wait a minute, what? There’s no reason they have to wait that long, particularly considering that House Democrats have repeatedly expressed their desire to get into court and start fighting the legal battle over the full Mueller report as soon as possible, which they can’t do until they hold this full House vote.
That means there’s a compelling reason behind the scenes for why House Democrats are looking at waiting a couple weeks before holding the full House contempt vote against Barr. We don’t know what it is, but considering that this all boils down to a legal battle in the courts, they must be planning to do something – or expecting something to happen – in the next couple weeks that’s going to change the parameters of that legal battle in a big way.
One potential clue is that House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff appeared on the Lawrence O’Donnell show on Wednesday night and stated that he and his committee might soon vote to hold William Barr in contempt as well. But it’s not clear why this alone would hold up the full House vote for a matter of weeks. There has to be more to this, and we suspect that soon enough, something big will surface which reveals the reason for the holdup.
