WASHINGTON – The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee threatened to hit the Justice Department with another subpoena if he doesn’t receive memos authored by ousted former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe.
“If they’re not produced by tomorrow (Monday) or Tuesday of this week, we are going to issue a subpoena to the Justice Department that expands upon the subpoena we issued earlier this year,” Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
McCabe’s memos are among many documents related to the Russia probe Goodlatte has been seeking in his effort to show alleged misconduct at the Justice Department and FBI.
The subpoena threats follow a New York Times report Friday that deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in May 2017 had suggested secretly recording President Trump and recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to oust him from office.
The Times said memos written by McCabe and other FBI officials documented Rosenstein’s efforts.
Goodlatte is convinced the Justice Department is withholding documents that support his theory – shared by Trump and his allies – that the FBI “bent over backwards” not to prosecute Hillary Clinton in her email probe, but then launched a Trump Russian collusion investigation “without meaningful evidence” because of political bias against the president.
The McCabe memos could shed new light on Rosenstein’s thinking before he appointed special counsel Robert Mueller to oversee the Russia probe, Goodlatte said.
“A lot of light can be shed on that if the documents we have been requesting for quite some time are made public,” said Goodlatte, who has been calling for second special counsel to investigate the handling of the Clinton email probe.
Additionally, Trump is seeking to declassify Russia probe documents related to the surveillance of a former Trump campaign aide, Carter Page, as well as FBI interviews with Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, and text messages sent by former FBI director James Comey, McCabe and lovebirds Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
Trump had initially ordered an immediate public release, but walked back the demands on Friday, citing the need for a review of the documents.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, the chairman of the powerful House Oversight Committee, said he doubts their release will have much impact on the perception of the Trump or the Russia probe.
“I’ve seen all of it,” Gowdy (R-S.C.) told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “And with the exception of one document, I don’t think anybody’s mind is going to be changed when they read this stuff.”