President Donald Trump ripped the Justice Department on Twitter Saturday after the agency failed to meet a deadline to turn over 1.2 million pages of unredacted documents to Congress on various FBI investigations surrounding the 2016 presidential election, accusing department officials of "slow-walking" and "stalling."
"Why aren’t they giving the strongly requested documents (unredacted) to the House Judiciary Committee?" the president asked in one tweet, while saying in another: "What is going on? Bad!"
Two House committees, Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform, subpoenaed the documents last month — giving the Justice Department a Thursday deadline.
The panels sought the unredacted documents on the FBI's investigations into Democrat Hillary Clinton's private email use, its methods to obtain a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court warrant to track former Trump campaign aide Carter Page, and a recommendation by agency to fire former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
Lawmakers said the documents had not been handed over, with North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, a Republican member of the Oversight Committee, slamming Justice on Twitter:
The Judiciary Committee is chaired by Virginia Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte, while the Oversight panel is headed by Rep. Trey Gowdy, the South Carolina Republican.
Goodlatte initially sought the documents in November, but issued the subpoena after what he called a slow response from the Justice Department.
Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd sent Goodlatte a letter last month, The Washington Times reported Friday.
Boyd said that the Justice Department was cooperating, but that the process was slowed because of the volume of documents and number of redactions involved.
Only about 3,000 of the 1.2 million documents sought have been handed over, the Times reported.
On Wednesday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes sent a letter to the FBI requesting original copies of documents outlining the probable cause to begin an investigation into members of the Trump campaign in 2016.
Nunes, a California Republican, set an April 11 response deadline in the letter.
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