The Justice Department says releasing secret grand jury documents from then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe to House lawmakers engaged in the impeachment inquiry could discourage future witnesses to presidential abuse from cooperating with grand juries.
“It is not difficult to imagine that a witness in a future investigation of alleged presidential misconduct might be deterred from testifying fully or frankly if she believed that her testimony would be readily disclosed to the House for use in impeachment proceedings,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in a brief filed on Monday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Attorneys for the Justice Department are asking the appeals court to reverse a lower court’s decision ordering the transfer of Mueller grand jury material to House investigators on a two-pronged argument: that an impeachment inquiry is not a “judicial proceeding” and that the House does not really need the documents to complete the impeachment investigation.
The head of the House Judiciary Committee on Monday announced that his panel had reached an agreement with the Department of Justice to obtain key underlying evidence from the Mueller report, staving off an imminent court battle over access to the files.