Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
The chairman of the Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee has fired off document requests to over 80 entities in President Trump's administration, as well as his family and business, dramatically expanding their investigations. This, even after the FBI, multiple congressional committees, and probably the Mueller investigation all failed to find evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia.
Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) announced on Monday that his committee served document requests to 81 agencies, entities, and individuals as part of its probe into "alleged obstruction of justice, public corruption, and other abuses of power by President Trump."
Nadler's gambit comes after the House Intelligence Committee, led by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), announced its own expanded probe into the president's finances last month.
These hostile actions have spurred some Republicans to cry foul, including Washington attorney Joe diGenova, who suggested today that Trump's DOJ should not cooperate with Nadler's abusive investigation.
"Over the last several years, President Trump has evaded accountability for his near-daily attacks on our basic legal, ethical, and constitutional rules and norms,” Nadler said in a statement. “Investigating these threats to the rule of law is an obligation of Congress and a core function of the House Judiciary Committee."
According to Fox News:
In addition to the White House, Nadler is seeking information from Trump family members, like Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Jared Kushner; from former administration figures like former chief of staff Reince Priebus, former national security adviser Mike Flynn, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former spokeswoman Hope Hicks; and from Trump campaign figures like Brad Parscale and Corey Lewandowski.
Also included on Nadler's list of "threats to the rule of law" is likely the most investigated man in America, former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who says he's been cooperating with various investigations for over two years.
"A lot of these same questions [in his document request] are the things that were already wiretapped and hacked off of my private emails going back to earlier in 2016," Page told Fox News' Martha MacCallum Monday night. He also confirmed that he spoke with members of Mueller's team in November 2017 and hasn't heard from them since.
Page told MacCallum that he may end up suing fired FBI Director James Comey, fired Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, former DNI Director James Clapper, and others.
"I'm confident that as the information continues to come out there, it will be clear that there was a lot of wrongdoing -- but wrongdoing on their side," Page said.
Some of the president's defenders reacted today by accusing Democrats of being sore losers who never got over losing the 2016 election and are now harassing the president. Trump featured their comments in some presidential tweets:
“Now that the Dems are going to try & switch from Collusion to some other reason, it makes them continue to look like sore losers who didn’t accept the WILL OF THE PEOPLE in the last election - they will do anything to get rid of the President.” @AriFleischer It will never work!
51.3K people are talking about this
“There is no Collusion. All of these investigations are in search of a crime. Democrats have no evidence to impeach President Trump. Ridiculous!” @DevinNunes @FoxNews
41.1K people are talking about this
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Doug Collins urged Nadler to “come back to reality" on Fox News Radio’s “Brian Kilmeade Show.”
“We’ve shown you for two years where the real problem is. Let’s have some open investigations. Let’s get [Rod] Rosenstein in there… let’s actually look at what the Department of Justice became and what the people can no longer trust,” Collins said.
Joe diGenova called the expanded probe an abuse of power and an example of "political double jeopardy."
On WMAL Monday morning, he called it "an abusive investigation designed to delegitimize the president of the United States," and warned that it will have political risks for the Democrats.
"Given the blunderbuss nature of their subpoenas and the clear political nature of their investigation, it may very well be that many people will resist these subpoenas, invoke privileges, and litigate the matter," diGenova said.
He suggested that the Democrats' flurry of frivolous subpoenas could wind up hurting Congress' power to subpoena individuals. "These investigations are skirting an area of the law that the Supreme Court has ruled that if investigations become abusive, they can be stopped," he explained.
"They have that power. They can issue subpoenas. They can also abuse that power and they are apparently headed toward that result -- abusing that power," diGenova warned.
He said that the Barr Department of Justice should refuse to produce documents on the basis of executive privilege, predicting that the American people would respect that lack of cooperation.
"If I had a client in this, I would advise him to take the Fifth. I wouldn't turn over anything to this committee," he said.
"This is designed to wound him for the upcoming election and delegitimize him while he governs," diGenova explained. "There's no better example of what they're doing than them holding the hearing with Michael Cohen while Trump was overseas in Vietnam in the North Korea denuclearization issue. That performance by the House while the president was overseas was un-American, unwise, and very, very dangerous to the conduct of U.S. foreign policy."
"I think they're drunk with power -- the Democrats are -- and they're going to push this too far," diGenova said. "The American people do not want this."
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