The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday approved a subpoena for the full Mueller report, ramping up the Democrats’ fight to receive an unredacted copy. The vote comes just a day after the original April 2 deadline for Attorney General William Barr to provide Congress with the full report. Barr has said that he’s been working with Mueller’s team to figure out what information must be redacted before the report’s passed on—but Democrats say any redactions are unacceptable. The approval doesn’t mean that Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) will subpoena the report immediately—but it gives him the power to do so whenever he deems it necessary.
“We are going to work with the AG for a short period of time and hope that he will reveal to us the entire Mueller report and all the underlying materials, and we'll go to court to get permission to have this material,” Nadler told reporters after Wednesday’s markup. “But if that doesn’t work out, in a very short order, we will issue the subpoenas.” The highest-ranking Republican on the committee, Doug Collins (R-GA), called the approval “political theater.” “He’s expressly forbidden from providing grand jury materials outside the department (with) very limited exceptions,” Collins said. “Congress is not one of the exceptions and the chairman knows it.”