were withheld due to a "deliberative process" and "attorney-client communications", according to the Justice Department. President Trump also asserted executive privilege over the documents to withhold them from Congress. Only once prior has a sitting Cabinet member been held in criminal contempt of Congress (Eric Holder in 2012). The House instructed the Justice Department to prosecute Barr, but the Department refused. Also in July 2019, Barr reportedly made the decision to not bring federal civil rights charges against New York policeman Daniel Pantaleo for causing the death of Eric Garner. In so doing, he overruled the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, which advocated charging Pantaleo, instead agreeing with Justice Department prosecutors from New York. On July 25, 2019, Barr reinstated the death penalty for federal crimes. On July 8, 2019, Barr announced his recusal from the Justice Department's review of the 2008 federal prosecution of American financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. On August 10, 2019, Epstein was found unresponsive in his jail cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC). Barr later announced that Justice Department officials were investigating "serious irregularities" at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. In mid-August 2019, Barr had a rare face-to-face meeting with Trump and Giuliani associates Joseph diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, who since earlier that year represented former Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin and pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch Dmytry Firtash as attorneys. Trump had announced in March 2018 that diGenova and Toensing would join his legal defense team during the Mueller investigation; the appointments were withdrawn days later, though Trump personal attorney Jay Sekulow said they might assist in other legal matters. DiGenova has said he has known Barr for thirty years, as they both worked in the Reagan Justice Department. Since 2014, Firtash had been fighting extradition to the United States under a federal indictment while he was living in Austria after being arrested there and released on $155 million bail, and diGenova and Toensing sought to have Barr drop the charges. Firtash was a middleman for importing Russian natural gas into Ukraine and has said he was installed in that role by Russian organized crime boss Semion Mogilevich; Russian president Vladimir Putin reportedly agreed to the appointment. When he was vice president, Joe Biden had urged Ukraine to eliminate middlemen such as Firtash and to reduce the country's reliance on imports of Russian natural gas. Giuliani had directed associate Lev Parnas to