Nov. 17 (UPI) -- House Democrats on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court to postpone a hearing over the lawmakers' efforts to obtain secret grand jury material gathered by former special counsel Robert Mueller's investigators.
Lawyers for the House judiciary committee asked for arguments in the case to be delayed from Dec. 2 until after the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.
House counsel Doug Letter said that with the installation of a new Democratic president and new members of Congress, the "newly constituted" judiciary committee will likely want to evaluate whether to proceed with the case.
"Under the circumstances, the committee respectfully requests that the Court remove this case from the December 2020 argument calendar," Letter's motion read. "The committee believes that postponing oral argument would be in the interest of the parties and the court and may conserve judicial resources."
The judiciary committee has been fighting for the redacted grand jury materials since summer 2019 as part of its investigation into Russian electoral interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and potential collusion with the Trump campaign.
The Justice Department argued earlier this year that the committee needs a court order to see the materials -- and even with that, without a judicial proceeding, they could only see redacted versions of the documents. An appellate court disagreed.
In February, the Supreme Court took up the case and temporarily blocked the released of the documents as the case played out in the court.
