UPDATED: At 4:20 PM EDT, the roll call vote was finally held. As expected, the vote fell on party lines, with the final vote count as 24-16. It will now go to the House for a full vote.
UPDATED: The House committee is currently (10:22 Pacific) marking up the final charge against Barr, which when passed will go to the House.
Chairman Jerry Nadler released this last night in response to the DoJ sending a letter stating they would advise Trump to claim executive privilege on the entire Mueller report:
“Tonight, in the middle of good faith negotiations with the Attorney General, the Department abruptly announced that it would instead ask President Trump to invoke executive privilege on all of the materials subject to our subpoena. This is, of course, not how executive privilege works. The White House waived these privileges long ago, and the Department seemed open to sharing these materials with us earlier today. The Department’s legal arguments are without credibility, merit, or legal or factual basis.
“Worse, this kind of obstruction is dangerous. The Department’s decision reflects President Trump’s blanket defiance of Congress’s constitutionally mandated duties. In the coming days, I expect that Congress will have no choice but to confront the behavior of this lawless Administration. The Committee will also take a hard look at the officials who are enabling this cover up. In the meantime, the Committee will proceed with consideration of the contempt citation as planned. I hope that the Department will think better of this last minute outburst and return to negotiations.”
The vote to proceed with a markup of the contempt charge went as scheduled, and passed along party lines, 22-12.
Once the committee votes on the final charge, it goes to the full House. The Republicans on the committee are strenuously clutching their pearls.
Editor's Note 11:00 AM PDT: An earlier version of this post said the contempt vote has already occurred. We jumped the gun on that, and regret the error. - Karoli
