When asked whether he would go as far as to sue the administration, Boehner said, “That is an option that is very possible.”
An architect of the House’s plan, Rep. Mike Pompeo, who sits on the Intelligence Committee, said he was briefed on the documents by an administration official who had also not seen them, but who had been briefed on their contents by the IAEA.
One document, he said, deals with the verification regime to make sure Iran is compliant with the deal and another has to do with the history of Iran’s weaponization program.
Pompeo said he hopes it does not come to a lawsuit, but he said the administration should exert pressure on the IAEA to turn over the documents and at the very least give Congressmen a classified briefing on the actual documents, not just their understanding of their contents.
“I’m hopeful the president will recognize that he didn’t comply with his obligations and will at least make a good faith effort to comply,” he said. “They have enormous leverage. … It’s not physically impossible. The documents exist in the world. They should simply demand access to the documents.”
The new House strategy on Iran was hatched Wednesday during a series of contentious meetings. Boehner had originally planned to go ahead with the bicameral plan of voting on a resolution of disapproval of the deal.
But Obama had pledged to veto the measure, and Democrats promised not to allow Republican leaders a two-thirds majority to override the veto. So several House Republicans rebelled against Boehner’s plan, causing him to change strategy.
Included in the new plan is a nonbinding measure expressing a sense of the House that Obama has not complied with the law, which the House passed on a party-line vote Thursday, and is perceived to be the first step in setting up a lawsuit against the administration.
The new plan has wide buy-in from the Republican rank-and-file. Rep. Raul Labrador, who was among the members rebelling on Wednesday, said he is on board with the new plan because instead of passing a resolution of disapproval, the House will likely vote down a resolution of approval. That, he said, turns the previous plan on its head, showing that the House is not complying with the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act.
“We don’t need to do a resolution of disapproval because the clock hasn’t started,” Labrador said. He added that, “Maybe there is a reason they don’t want us to see those documents and maybe there is something in those documents that will change some minds.”
The House will vote on that measure Friday, along with another stating that the administration cannot lift sanctions.
But Republican Senate leaders have said they will continue with the previous plan of voting on a resolution of disapproval and have been dismissive of House conservatives’ complaints, making it unclear how far the House can unilaterally take this.
The vote comes a day after Boehner secured a legal victory against Obama in another case involving the president’s health care law. The House was found to have standing to sue the administration over the way low-income subsidies were financed.