Trump asserts executive privilege over Mueller report

The House Judiciary Committee will vote this morning on whether to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress. If the vote passes in the panel, it will then be taken up by the full House.

Being held in contempt of Congress means someone has obstructed the work of either Congress or a congressional committee.

This can take a lot of forms: Sometimes that disobedience means refusing to appear before a committee to testify, and sometimes that means refusing to pony up requested documents.

What's the point of holding someone in contempt of Congress? According to the Congressional Research Service, contempt can be used to coerce compliance, to punish the person or to remove whatever the obstruction is.

There are several ways members of Congress can do this:

The House Judiciary committee is voting this morning on whether to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress.

The decision to hold the vote came after the Justice Department declined to provide an unredacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller's report to Congress. This isn't related to Barr's decision not to testify before the committee last week.

So what happens next? If the Judiciary Committee votes Wednesday to hold Barr in contempt, the matter would then be taken up by the full House, where Democrats have a 38-seat majority.

The contempt citation is unlikely to have much practical effect — House Republicans held then-Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt during the Obama administration, too — but it ratchets up the stakes for House Democrats and the Justice Department at a sensitive time.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Attorney General William Barr should be held in contempt during an on-stage interview with the Washington Post.

"Yes, he should be held in contempt," she said.

Remember: She's referring to the Department of Justice's failure to comply to the subpoena for the unredacted report, rather than his not showing up to testify. 

As for the negotiations this week to avoid the contempt hearing, Pelosi said:

Pelosi deferred again on whether the contempt vote should be brought to the floor.

"They'll today take their action in the committee and then the next step would be to bring it to the floor. We’ll see what their recommendation is about that," she said.

On possible impeachment, she reiterated nothing is off the table but still urged caution. 

"Well, nothing is ever off the table, but I would say that---there's... I wish everybody would take a deep breath and be almost prayerful about this." 

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler has scheduled a Wednesday vote to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress after the Justice Department declined to provide an unredacted version of the Mueller report to Congress.

The vote to hold Barr in contempt marks the first time that House Democrats are moving to punish a Trump administration official for defying a congressional subpoena and represents a dramatic escalation in tensions between Democrats and the White House.

Nadler set Wednesday's Judiciary Committee vote after Barr did not agree by Monday's 9 a.m. ET deadline to comply with a subpoena for special counsel Robert Mueller's full, unredacted report and underlying evidence to Congress.