Donald Trump with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak in the White House, May 10, 2017
An appeals court rules that the House of Representatives has a right to see secret grand-jury evidence gathered in the Trump-Russia investigation.
In a 2-to-1 decision, the court for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a lower-court ruling that the House can see the information gathered by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
With Attorney General William Barr protecting Trump from political and legal damage, the Justice Department blacked out the information in the published version of the Mueller Report in April 2019.
The ruling followed the 1974 precedent, during the impeachment process against President Richard Nixon, that Congress can view grand jury materials in exceptional circumstances.
Judge Judith Rogers, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, and Judge Thomas Griffith, an appointee of President George W. Bush, ruled that need for the information outweighed the general interest in keeping grand jury evidence secret. Rogers wrote:
The [House] committee states that it needs the unredacted material to review these findings and make its own independent determination about the president’s conduct. Courts must take care not to second-guess the manner in which the House plans to proceed with its impeachment investigation or interfere with the House’s sole power of impeachment.
A lawyer for House Democrats argued that Mueller’s evidence is needed to establish if Trump lied under oath in his written answers about his 2016 campaign’s connection with WikiLeaks, which released e-mails stolen by Russian officials to damage Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
Trump denied knowledge of the contents of the e-mails and WikiLeaks’ plans for publication. But open passages in the Mueller Report pointed to Roger Stone — now serving a 30-month sentence for lying to Congress and tampering with a witness — as the Trump campaign’s liaison with WikiLeaks.
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The House also is seeking additional information about a June 2016 meeting between Russian officials and Trump campaign officials in Trump Tower.
