Thanks @rusticgorilla
Yes, it’ s a big day…Monday May 6th.
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House Judiciary Committee will take a vote on Wednesday to hold Atty General Barr in contempt. Go get him…
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Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee said they will vote Wednesday on whether to hold Attorney General William P. Barr in contempt of Congress after Barr missed a deadline to produce a complete version of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report.
The panel had set a deadline of 9 a.m. Monday for Barr to provide the unredacted version of Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. It announced the planned vote in a statement Monday.
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Guys it’s on like Donkey Kong! 
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.
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Two committees - House Foreign Affairs and Financial Services Committee are calling for sanctions for all the human rights abuses in Russia. Dems shaking it up.
The leaders of the House Foreign Affairs and Financial Services Committees are accusing the Trump administration of violating a law requiring a report on human rights abuses in Russia.
Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the Foreign Affairs panel, and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the Financial Services chairwoman, on Monday said the Trump administration is four months late to a deadline requiring a report on the U.S. government’s efforts to impose sanctions on human rights abusers in Russia.
“Given the concerning increase and high profile of human rights violations in Russia, it is important that the administration take action under the Russia Magnitsky Act in order to send a clear signal to members of Vladimir Putin’s repressive government that their actions will not go unanswered and make clear to the world the United States’ profound concern about the deteriorating human rights conditions in the Russian Federation,” Engel and Waters wrote to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
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Most telling paragraphs from the CNN reporting.
… Democrats on the tax-writing committee have argued that they have the ability to request Trump’s personal tax information under an obscure statute that permits three people to request personal tax information of any individual: the House Ways and Means Committee chairman, the Senate Finance Committee chairman and the chief of staff for the Joint Committee on Taxation.
The statute says that the secretary of the Treasury “shall furnish” it.
The statute has been used by Congress before, including in the Republican investigation under President Barack Obama into whether the IRS was discriminating against conservative groups applying for non-profit status. Requests for information using the law are also made on a regular basis for research purposes. …
So the Republicans can use this statute to investigate a Democratic Administration, but Democrats can’t use it to investigate a Republican Administration? The fact that this has a clear precedent demonstrates that the Republicans are simply obstructing here – pure and simple.
And note to the media: Since the statute was used by Republicans as recently as under the previous administration, let’s stop calling it “obscure.” Just call it what it is: a statute – and Trump’s Treasury Secretary is breaking the law when he refuses to comply with it.
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Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a leading contractor for President Trump’s inaugural committee and a former adviser to the first lady, Melania Trump, has publicly disputed accounts of her departure from the White House last year, rejecting claims from officials that she had been dismissed.
Ms. Winston Wolkoff specifically took issue with suggestions by White House officials that she was forced out because of reports that she had profited excessively from her role in helping organize inaugural events. She gave her account of what happened in a statement to The New York Times more than a year after she parted ways with the White House, where she had served as an unpaid adviser to Mrs. Trump after the inauguration.
“Was I fired? No,” Ms. Winston Wolkoff said in the statement. “Did I personally receive $26 million or $1.6 million? No. Was I thrown under the bus? Yes.”
It was the first time Ms. Winston Wolkoff has provided extensive public comments about the events around her split from the White House, including characterizations at the time by White House officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, that she had been forced out because of reports about lavish spending on the inauguration.
Her lawyer recently informed inaugural committee officials that she had been cooperating since last fall with federal prosecutors in Manhattan investigating the committee’s spending and fund-raising.
I wonder if she’s cooperating with the House Judiciary Committee as well. The head of the Inaugural Committee, Tom Barrack, has announced that he’s cooperating. Although I’m skeptical if he will be truthful when push comes to shove since he is a staunch friend and unrelenting defender of Trump.
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The strange goings on within Inaugural Committee was not in the Mueller Report. This area could use more investigation. 
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Rachel Maddow does a great job of explaining what is in the massive cache of documents that White House Counsel Don McGahn has been commanded to hand over to the House Judiciary Committee by 10am tomorrow (Tues., May 7). The entire segment is worth watching, but if you’re most interested in this “trove of evidence,” zoom to the 6 minute mark.
The two big questions are: 1) Will McGahn refuse to comply with the subpoena? 2) Even if McGahn agrees to comply, will Trump try to block him at the last minute? We’ll soon find out! 
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She does a GREAT job…and all of her guests say once they are introduced if she got the story right, and they ALWAYS say…yes, you have explained it very well.
McGahn seems to know that he as WH lawyer could only act on certain things, and was smart to set his limits when it came to T, and his trusty Annie Donaldson who wrote those notes. McGahn was saving his own hide when it came to talking with Mueller’s team absolutely.
But McGahn accomplished his goals in that position - load the courts with very conservative judges - See Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and all the judges they found via the Federalist Society and put into judgeships.
McGahn has since gone back into a law firm, the one that he left. He got what he needed - prestige job, protect his job, get others hired, CYA.
…
McGahn, who left the West Wing last October, was a key figure in the selection and confirmations of Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh, whose nomination last year was roiled by sexual misconduct allegations.According to two Senate GOP aides, McGahn has recently boosted Neomi Rao, Trump’s nominee to replace Kavanaugh on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in phone calls with lawmakers. Rao has encountered some Republican resistance, with a few GOP senators questioning whether she would expand abortion rights.
McGahn declined to comment about private exchanges.
McGahn’s moves inside and outside the White House have drawn criticism for giving conservative groups such as the powerful Federalist Society and their allies too much influence in the judicial nomination process.
“I don’t think we’ve ever seen the equivalence of the Federalist Society in any administration prior, either Republican or Democratic,” said Walter E. Dellinger, a former acting solicitor general for President Bill Clinton. “You have the White House, Federalist Society and Senate leadership working together in an unprecedented way.”
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Breaking:
Former White House Counsel Don McGahn will not comply with a congressional subpoena for documents related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, after the White House instructed him not to abide by House Democrats’ demands.
The WH is citing executive privilege after the fact.
The White House on Tuesday invoked executive privilege to bar former White House counsel Donald McGahn from complying with a congressional subpoena to provide documents to Congress related to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation.
White House counsel Pat A. Cipollone wrote in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee that McGahn does not have the legal right to comply with its subpoena for 36 types of documents — most relating to Mueller’s nearly two-year probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Rather, Cipollone argued the committee needed to send the request to the White House — and even hinted that they could assert privilege to block the information.
“The White House provided these records to Mr. McGahn in connection with its cooperation with the special counsel’s investigation and with the clear understanding that the records remain subject to the control of the White House for all purposes,” he wrote. “The White House records remain legally protected from disclosure under long-standing constitutional principles, because they implicate significant executive branch confidentiality interests and executive privilege.”
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taunting, taunting, taunting
President Donald Trump is “goading” Democrats to try and impeach him because he believes it would help “solidify his base” of supporters, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday.
Pelosi has not been shy about publicly criticizing the president and his administration. But she has shown clear resistance toward the politically fraught prospect of impeaching Trump, even amid growing pressure from her progressive Democratic colleagues to support the drastic move.
[…]
"Trump — I use his name — Trump is goading us to impeach him," she said. "That’s what he’s doing. Every single day, he’s just like taunting, taunting, taunting."
Pelosi said Trump was dropping that bait because "he knows that it would be very divisive in the country, but he doesn’t really care. He just wants to solidify his base."
[…]
Pelosi described impeachment as a difficult political situation for Democrats, in which the party risks alienating one bloc of supporters on the left if they refuse to impeach Trump, and another bloc of potential supporters in the middle if they proceed with impeachment.
As Pelosi described it, the party “can’t impeach him for political reasons,” but also can’t refuse to impeach him for political reasons, either. “We have to see where the facts take us,” she said.
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Header is updated. Breaking News Below. 
The Justice Department offered on Tuesday to allow more congressional staffers access to a less-redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report — an attempt to head off a Wednesday vote to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for defying a Democratic subpoena for Mueller’s entire findings and evidence.
The concessions also included allowing a select number of senior lawmakers — just 12 have been allowed access to the less-redacted version — to keep their handwritten notes on the report.
But importantly, the offer does not include allowing additional lawmakers to view the document, and those who can would still be forbidden from discussing it or sharing their notes with colleagues — leaving a key demand from Democrats unresolved.
According to two sources familiar with Tuesday’s negotiating session, the Justice Department offered to allow each of the lawmakers to bring two staffers — instead of just one — to view the less-redacted version.
Initially, the department said it would only allow the top Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, in addition to bipartisan House and Senate leaders, to view the less-redacted version.
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Waiting for this story… Nunes and Schiff working together again.
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Don’t take it!! I want contempt votes, fines & jail. This has gone on long enough & I’m out for blood 
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Don’t worry, they’re not going to take it.
Contempt of Congress for one William Barr has been scheduled for Wednesday morning, 10am. ET 
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The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday threatened to withhold the salaries of Interior Department officials who have blocked lawmakers from interviewing agency employees about whether Secretary David Bernhardt was complying with recordkeeping laws.
The committee’s threat ratchets up the pressure on Interior in the latest skirmish between House Democrats and the Trump administration over the lawmakers’ complaints that agencies are withholding documents and ignoring requests to send senior officials to testify before Congress.
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The House Intelligence Committee’s Democratic chairman and Republican ranking member are threatening to hit the Justice Department with a rare bipartisan subpoena if the department doesn’t hand over testimony and briefing materials produced by Special Counsel Robert Mueller during the Russia investigation.
In a letter dated April 25, Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Ranking Member Devin Nunes (R-CA) wrote to Attorney General Bill Barr, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and FBI Director Christopher Wray to complain that the “Department of Justice and the FBI failed to keep the Committee ‘fully and currently informed’” of foreign intelligence and counterintelligence information obtained in the course of Mueller’s investigation. Schiff and Nunes expressed concerns that the Department and Bureau also failed to the address the committee’s prior request for Mueller to testify before the committee.
WSJ has it too.
Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, joined with committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) in a bipartisan letter late last month demanding that the Justice Department turn over the evidence Mr. Mueller collected related to intelligence or counterintelligence matters.
A copy of the letter was shown to The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday by an intelligence committee aide, who said the panel would “soon” consider a subpoena if the Justice Department didn’t begin talks about how to fulfill the panel’s request.
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