The foreman of the first grand jury to investigate the Watergate scandal said in a new interview that grand jury material related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation should be made public.
Vladimir Pregelj, 91, told The Washington Post that he stood behind a letter from the Watergate grand jury that unsuccessfully summoned then-President Nixon to testify, and that Americans had a right to see the information Mueller’s grand jury collected.
{mosads}“In my citizen’s heart, I feel the information gathered by the grand jury should be made public,” he told the Post.
While Mueller’s office submitted its final report to Attorney General William Barr last month, the 23-member grand jury’s term is not set to expire until July, and its work “continues robustly” through several related cases transferred to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, according to the Post.
Although Barr is expected to deliver a redacted version of Mueller’s report this week, the delivery of grand jury material has been a more controversial matter.
Barr told a House subcommittee he would not ask a federal court to grant an exemption to federal law that generally requires grand jury proceedings be kept secret.
“The chairman of the Judiciary Committee is free to go to court if he feels one of those exceptions is applicable,” Barr told Rep. Ed Case (D-Hawaii) last week. “My intention is not to ask for it at this stage.”
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) has suggested he will subpoena the material after Barr has delivered the redacted report.
“We have established that we’ve done everything we could to cooperate with the attorney general, to cooperate with the department, but he hasn’t reciprocated,” Nadler said. “We need this material to do our job.”