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Pelosi demands Barr and Sessions testify on data subpoenas she says go "beyond Richard Nixon"

14 June 2021
 Dan Ackermann

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told CNN Sunday that former Attorneys General William Barr and Jeff Sessions should testify before Congress on reports that the Trump-era Department of Justice seized Democrats' and journalists' data records.

Driving the news: DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz announced Friday an internal investigation into the matter, and Pelosi expressed disbelief to CNN's Dana Brash at assertions that neither Barr nor Sessions knew of probes into lawmakers.

"To say that they didn't know anything about it is beyond belief. We will have to have them come under oath to testify about that."
Pelosi

What she's saying: "How could it be that there could be an investigation of members in the other branch of government and the press and the rest too and the attorneys general did not know?" Pelosi said to Brash on CNN's "State of the Union." "So who are these people and are they still in the Justice Department?"

  • She told Brash that reports that the former administration — "the Justice Department, the leadership of the former president" — subpoenaed tech companies to access Congress members' data "goes even beyond Richard Nixon."
  • "Richard Nixon had an enemies list," she noted about the former president, who resigned following the Watergate break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the 1970s. "This is about undermining the rule of law."

The other side: Barr told Politico Friday that he was "not aware of any congressman's records being sought in a leak case" and that former President Trump "was not aware of who we were looking at in any of the cases," nor did he discuss such matters with him.

  • Rod Rosenstein, who served as deputy attorney general in the Trump administration, has said he wasn't aware of any subpoenas against Apple for data belonging to House Democrats when Sessions was attorney general, per CNN.
  • Representatives for Barr, Sessions and Trump could not immediately be reached.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "The Justice Department has been rogue under President Trump ... This is just another manifestation of their rogue activity." https://t.co/UUezBIMe9q#CNNSOTUpic.twitter.com/J8yxHCgrhd

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) June 13, 2021

Go deeper: Trump-era Justice Department emerges as scandal of the summer

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.