Release of Mueller grand-jury materials to House committee delayed by court order

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Washington Post

The Justice Department got a reprieve Tuesday and does not have to immediately release to Congress certain grand-jury materials from Robert S. Mueller III’s special-counsel investigation, a federal appeals court in Washington said.

The court order temporarily puts on hold a ruling from last week that required the department to hand over materials the House Judiciary Committee is seeking as part of its impeachment inquiry into President Trump. The court order means the issue will not be resolved before Nov. 5, when the final filing from the parties is due.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was responding to an emergency request from the Justice Department, which said in a court filing that it would be “irreparably harmed” without a stay and that “once the information is disclosed, it cannot be recalled and the confidentiality of the grand jury information will be lost for all time.”

A three-judge panel paused the order pending further review but made clear it was not deciding the merits of the case. “The purpose of this administrative stay is to give the court sufficient opportunity to consider the emergency motion for stay pending appeal and should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits of that motion,” according to the brief order from Judges Patricia A. Millett, Cornelia T.L. Pillard and Robert L. Wilkins, who were all nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/release-of-mueller-grand-jury-materials-to-house-committee-delayed-by-court-order/2019/10/29/4278e80c-f9d9-11e9-8906-ab6b60de9124_story.html

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Here is a copy of the order - https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/6750f366-41e7-4050-baee-ae15b8284f03/note/c41e42d4-5034-48ec-8306-e039e0c0ad66.pdf#page=1 (PDF)

It looks like they want to take time to review all the arguments further before deciding on a longer term stay.

(makes me wonder if whatever they decide - i.e., if they do let it move forward, they want to have all their ducks in a row because it will hit the SCOTUS)

[JoeOtterbein]

1. Take one vote on Thursday and then they should take another vote on Friday...

To Impeach the MFer!

[DallasNE]

2. This Kinda Makes Sense

On Thursday the House could vote "no" on impeachment and then the Court should rule against the release of the material. If the vote goes as expected we have precedence for releasing the material so a ruling not to release would mean that prior rulings were wrongly decided. I would not expect that to happen. I also don't understand why this impacts November 5th.

[BumRushDaShow]

5. The Thursday vote is just for the House roadmap/rules to have public hearings/testimony

and has nothing to do with an actual "impeachment". Given that Democrats hold the majority of the House, they only need 218 of them (or whatever the majority number would be as there are a couple vacancies) to adopt the rules.

The reference to the November 5th date relates to getting a final ruling on the appeal - i.e., the lower (District) court ordered the info be turned over by today (October 30). DOJ appealed that and wanted to halt any document production until the appeal was heard, which wouldn't have happened until after the original date the materials were due. So DOJ also requested an emergency stay for production pending the appeal hearing and resolution of that appeal, where the appeal arguments weren't supposed to happen until Friday November 1st (with the assumption that a final ruling wouldn't come until next week - with Tuesday November 5th probably being the earliest they might get a decision, although sometimes these rulings come earlier).

In this case if that emergency stay hadn't been put in place, the material would have had to have been produced before the appeal was heard, making the appeal moot because they can't recall the docs once released. If anything, I think each level of these lower courts wanted to really have their ducks in a row knowing this would go to the SCOTUS and would add to previous precedents for turning over grand jury material to Congress related to a Presidential impeachment.

[BlueIdaho]

3. Justice Delayed

Is Justice Denied.

[SergeStorms]

4. For a guy who's totally innocent of any wrong-doing.....

Trump and his cronies have gone to extremes to keep any of their vindicating evidence from seeing the light of day. I suppose they're just establishing precedent for future administrations, right?