{"id":41328,"date":"2019-10-25T23:22:19","date_gmt":"2019-10-25T23:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41328"},"modified":"2019-10-25T23:22:19","modified_gmt":"2019-10-25T23:22:19","slug":"judge-rules-doj-must-give-house-mueller-grand-jury-evidence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=41328","title":{"rendered":"Judge rules DOJ must give House Mueller grand jury evidence"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"body-200771816342556199\" readability=\"97.280898876404\">\n<p class=\"speakable\">A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/country\/united-states.html\">United States<\/a>\u00a0judge\u00a0on Friday ordered the Justice Department to give the House secret grand jury testimony from special counsel Robert Mueller&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/country\/russia.html\">Russia<\/a> investigation, handing a victory to Democrats who want it for the impeachment inquiry against President <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/people\/donald-trump.html\">Donald Trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">Chief US District Judge Beryl Howell ordered the department to turn over the materials by October 30. A Justice Department spokeswoman said it was reviewing the decision.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">The material covered by Howell&#8217;s order includes redacted grand jury material mentioned in Mueller&#8217;s report, which is the only piece of the document that Democrats have yet to see.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In a 75-page ruling accompanying the order, Howell slashed through many of the administration&#8217;s arguments for withholding materials from Congress. While the Justice Department said it could not provide grand jury material under existing law, &#8220;DOJ is wrong&#8221;, she wrote. And while the White House and its Republican allies argued impeachment is illegitimate without a formal vote, she later added, &#8220;A House resolution has never, in fact, been required.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The judge also rejected the Justice Department&#8217;s argument that impeachment is not a &#8220;judicial proceeding&#8221; under the law, for which the information could be disclosed.<\/p>\n<p>Justice Department lawyers argued against providing the materials at a hearing earlier this month. They said House Democrats already had sufficient evidence from Mueller&#8217;s investigation, including copies of summaries of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/organisations\/fbi.html\">FBI<\/a> witness interviews.<\/p>\n<p>Many of the key witnesses in the Trump orbit, including former White House counsel Don McGahn, submitted to voluntary interviews before Mueller&#8217;s team rather than appear before the grand jury, making it unclear how much significant new information tied to the president is contained in the grand jury transcripts.<\/p>\n<p>The department had also argued that the House panel could not show how the material would help in the committee&#8217;s investigations of Trump.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A United States\u00a0judge\u00a0on Friday ordered the Justice Department to give the House secret grand jury testimony from special counsel Robert Mueller&#8217;s Russia investigation, handing a victory to Democrats who want it for the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. Chief US District Judge Beryl Howell ordered the department to turn over the materials by October&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":41329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}