(This opinion editorial was first published in National Review on May 10, 2019.)

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has declared it a “constitutional crisis” that Attorney General William Barr refuses to divulge the small parts of the Mueller report that contain grand-jury material. By a straight party-line vote, the House Judiciary Committee voted to hold Barr in contempt of Congress.

What did Pelosi think when Barr’s predecessor, Eric Holder, refused to divulge documents to a congressional committee and was held in contempt? “Ridiculous!” she said. What did Holder and Obama say? That the House subpoena was a violation of “separation of powers.”

(Continue reading the article on National Review’s page here.)

Michael McConnell, a former federal appellate judge, is the Richard & Frances Mallery Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, Director of Stanford’s Constitutional Law Center, and Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution.