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The United States Supreme Court on Friday dropped scheduled oral argument as part of a House committee’s legal fight to obtain documents from Special Advocate Robert Mueller’s investigation into President Donald Trump .
Accepting a request from lawyers for the House of Representatives, the court removed the argument, originally scheduled for December 2, from the calendar. The case involves a lawsuit brought by the House Judiciary Committee, seeking to obtain Trump-related documents compiled by Mueller’s team of special advocates.
In a letter to the court, House lawyers said the documents – which the committee initially sought for its impeachment inquiry – may no longer be needed, given Joe Biden’s presidential victory. .
“A new Congress will meet in the first week of January 2021 and President-elect Biden will be inaugurated on January 20, 2021. Once these events occur, the newly constituted Committee will need to determine whether it wishes to proceed with the request for the documents of the grand jury which gave rise to this case, ”their letter indicates.
The Justice Department said it was prepared to continue arguing as scheduled before the court removed the case from the December schedule.
When Mueller’s work ended in March 2019, the Justice Department sent a version of its final report to Congress, but it redacted, or obscured, references to information gathered by Mueller’s grand jury. The House Judiciary Committee has asked a federal judge to issue an order directing the Justice Department to hand over an unredacted copy of the report along with some of the documents and interviews mentioned in the obscured material.
The deliberations of a federal grand jury are secret, including its findings and anything generated during its investigations. But there are exceptions. Courts are authorized to allow disclosure when they discover that the material would be used “before or in the context of legal proceedings”. Two lower courts ruled that the Judicial Committee was covered by this exception, ruling that an indictment in the House was preliminary to a trial in the Senate, which is a judicial process.
The Justice Department maintained that exceptions to the rules of grand jury secrecy did not apply, stating that “the ordinary meaning of ‘court proceeding’ is proceeding in court, not an impeachment trial before lawmakers. elected. ” But the House said it was covered by the exception, noting that the Constitution states that the Senate has exclusive power to “try” all indictments, requires the chief justice to preside and refers to a ” judgment ”in the event of an indictment.
For now, the Supreme Court case is still on the table, but it will likely be dropped early next year.
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