Mueller investigation: Supreme Court denies Congress access to secret testimony from Russia probe

The Supreme Court will keep secret grand jury testimony collected by former special counsel Robert Mueller out of House Democrats' hands until after the November presidential election.

The high court on Thursday agreed to hear a Trump administration appeal of a lower court decision ordering the testimony to be handed over to the House of Representatives, which Democrats control. With the matter now headed to the highest court in the land, the process ton decide the fate of the testimony will stretch into next year.

Even though Mr Mueller's final report stated his team found no evidence of a coordinated collusion effort between Trump 2016 campaign officials and Russians, it did not exonerate the president on the question of whether he obstructed justice by trying to interfere with or slow-roll the probe. House and Senate Democrats had hoped Mr Mueller would find evidence of collusion and state clear that the sitting president of the United States obstructed a federal investigation. But he did neither.

Mr Mueller's findings were not even a major part of House Democrats' impeachment case against Mr Trump, which some legal experts have said was a mistake even though GOP sources doubt it would have caused enough Senate Republicans to turn their backs on Mr Trump by voting for his removal.

As for the high court's Thursday decision: It amounts to a major court win for the president.

That's because arguments may not happen before the Supreme Court's nine justices before Election Day (3 November). That could prevent his lawyers from arguing in court, which would be played over and over on cable news shows, to keep potentially damning grand jury testimony about his actions as commander in chief sealed and out of view for Americans deciding whether to give him a second term or elect former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee.

What's more, the Supreme Court's decision to take the case shows again its longtime deference to the Office of the President. Mr Trump also is arguing at the high court that Congress has no right to his bank and financial records, cases that could be decided this month.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said Democrats must now focus on defeating the president in November.

"I am disappointed by the Court's decision to prolong this case further, but I am confident we will prevail. In every administration before this one, [the Department of Justice] has cooperated with the Judiciary Committee's requests for grand jury materials relating to investigations of impeachable offenses. Attorney General Barr broke from that practice, and DOJ's newly invented arguments against disclosure have failed at every level," the New York Democrat said in a statement.

"Unfortunately, President Trump and Attorney General Barr are continuing to try to run out the clock on any and all accountability. While I am confident their legal arguments will fail," he added, "it is now all the more important for the American people to hold the President accountable at the ballot box in November."