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The House’s inability to get information out of the executive branch has been at the heart of the impeachment trial.
Federal Judge Randy Moss raised the possibility today that individual members of Congress may have more success getting documents from President Trump’s administration if they sued as private citizens.
Moss raised the issue during a hearing over a House subpoena over the 2020 Census, where agencies have refused to turn over some documents.
“It strikes me as remarkable that the institution [of Congress] lacks the power to enforce a subpoena,” Moss said.
Some context: Judges like Moss in DC’s District Court frequently force government agencies to make their records public.
Yet the Justice Department has bogged down House requests for records during impeachment and related investigations because of questions about the judiciary’s role in disputes between the executive branch and Congress.
So far, private groups have gotten hundreds of pages of documents related to President Trump and other officials’ dealings with Ukraine through FOIA cases.
At the same time, the House hasn’t been able to get those documents. Some of the documents released thus far — happening while the House’s Ukraine inquiry and the Senate trial have been ongoing — added new information about the administration’s withholding of military aid to Ukraine and interactions with Trump’s private attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Moss didn’t mention Schiff by name today but his comments indirectly raised the question: Could House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff have gotten the Trump-Ukraine documents by himself if he pursued them under the public records law?
As soon as Moss pointed out the logic, the DOJ civil division chief Jody Hunt shook his head in the courtroom, While House general counsel Doug Letter and his colleagues around him nodded with broad smiles.
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