Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee set a deadline of 5 p.m. on Monday for the FBI to respond to subpoena requests issued by the Committee, as was reported.
As the FBI has chosen not to meet the deadline to fulfill the subpoena requests, Congress must now act. Mark Meadows (R-NC) explained the process to Fox News's Laura Ingraham Monday night.
"Well, I think the next thing is floor action for all of us," Meadows told Ingraham, reports CNS News.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) "made a promise" that if the FBI and DOJ didn't turn over all of the requested information by last Friday, "we would see floor action this week." Meadows said he's "waiting for him to follow through on that commitment."
Floor action could include a number of things: citation for contempt of Congress, eventual impeachment, or a “sense of Congress” resolution.
The response to Nunes's Monday evening deadline came from Assistant AG Stephen Boyd.
“With respect to your question concerning the use of confidential human sources, the FBI already has responded to this request, including in a classified written response to this question on Friday June 22, 2018,” Boyd wrote. Boyd further explained that many of the subpoenaed documents concern “confidential human sources that are solely in the custody and control of the FBI, and therefore the FBI has an “obligation to protect” said sources and methods.
“The one good thing that the FBI and DOJ is very good at is creative writing. You know, any time you would suggest that we have all the documents, when we have tens of thousands of documents that have not been delivered -- As we speak right now, we have a valid subpoena that has not been really responded to appropriately, and it's 97 days and ticking. And so for them to suggest that we have everything is just factually incorrect,” said Meadows.
Last Friday evening, the FBI sent two letters to the intelligence committee one of those letters was classified. However, these letters have "raised more questions than answers," Nunes wrote on Sunday in his response to the FBI. "These questions include whether the FBI and Department of Justice leadership intend to obey the law and fully comply with duly authorized congressional subpoenas.”
On June 17th, Nunes said there would be "hell to pay" if the FBI and DOJ continue to refuse the release of subpoenaed documents:
“But I can tell you that it’s not going to be pretty," said Nunes. "We can hold in contempt. We can pass sense of Congress resolutions. We can impeach. And, look, and I think we're getting close to there, right? I mean, if they don't have good reasons why they haven't provided us this information, the American people's patience has run out. My patience has run out."
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