Will the Road to Impeachment Be Blocked by Executive Privilege and Timid Democrats?
Major Leader Mitch McConnell, acting in his role as the undertaker for democracy in the United States, appeared before the Senate this morning to declare it’s now “case closed” when it comes to Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Using the GOP’s version of truth jujitsu, he said the focus on Mueller is distracting from where the real focus should be: Russia’s interference in elections. Now we’re supposed to believe discussion about the Mueller report “is doing Putin’s job for him.”
https://twitter.com/IsaacDovere/status/1125796855659495424
This is the same Senate Majority Leader who has apparently forgotten blocking the Obama administration from issuing a public warning about Russia trying to tilt the 2016 election. Then Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, ex-FBI Director James Comey, ex-Homeland Security adviser Lisa Monaco and 12 key members of Congress were all in the room as McConnell voiced skepticism about the underlying intelligence.
It was McConnell who followed orders from the Trump administration to block legislation co-sponsored by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn) and James Lankford (R-Okla.) designed to make the 2020 elections more secure. The legislation would have required, among other things, that paper ballots be used as a backup in case something is amiss.
Sadly, this latest attempt by the administration and its minions is just one piece of a larger effort whose ultimate results will be the continued degradation of the rule of law and another four years for Donald J. Trump in the White House.
The President is stonewalling the House and has declared, “We’re fighting all the subpoenas.” He is prepared to try to use executive privilege to try to stop current and former administration officials from testifying in Congress.
Here’s an overview from Philadelphia’s Will Bunch:
...the most significant development for Trump’s 2020 reelection bid is something else that came into clear focus over the course of the week: The president has a plan for survival. It involves essentially shredding the Constitution, demolishing the government of “checks and balances” that was envisioned by the Founders, and promoting a crisis that will leave Americans angry and, at least psychologically, poised for a civil war. That sounds scary but the scariest part is: It just might work: Not for the nation, of course, but for Trump, which in Trumpland is the only outcome that matters.
And somewhere in an underworld ringed by fire, Trump’s evil-genius late mentor Roy Cohn is looking upward and smiling over how well he taught his protégé.
It was Manhattan attorney and fixer Cohn who took a young developer out of Queens in the 1970s and ’80s and taught Trump the strategies that Cohn had engineered at the right hand of 1950s’ Red-baiter Sen. Joe McCarthy: Deny everything. Admit nothing. Never apologize. When challenged, unleash massive retaliation – including a barrage of lawsuits and legal challenges, no matter how frivolous –without any concern toward how bad or embarrassing that might look ... or what innocent bystander gets caught in the crossfire.
Here’s former Darrell Issa aide Kurt Bardella --who knows a thing or two about Congressional inquiries-- in an op-ed written for NBC News:
If there is a policy this White House does not like, it unilaterally changes it. If there’s a question Trump officials don’t want to answer, they don’t show up, as Attorney General William Barr did. If there’s information they want to keep hidden from the American people, they sue a co-equal branch of government to keep it secret.
Today, I’ll list some of the pieces of this endeavor. Taken together, they paint a rather grim picture.
A bipartisan group of former prosecutors has issued a letter challenging the conclusions of the Attorney General on the Mueller Report:
Via The Washington Post:
More than 450 former federal prosecutors who worked in Republican and Democratic administrations have signed on to a statement asserting special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s findings would have produced obstruction charges against President Trump — if not for the office he holds.
The statement — signed by myriad former career government employees as well as high-profile political appointees — offers a rebuttal to Attorney General William P. Barr’s determination that the evidence Mueller uncovered was “not sufficient” to establish that Trump committed a crime...
...The list also includes more than 20 former U.S. attorneys and more than 100 people with at least 20 years of service at the Justice Department — most of them former career officials. The signers worked in every presidential administration since that of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a former federal prosecutor, joined the letter after news of it broke, and Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, tweeted his support for its premise.
Democrats prepare to hold William Barr in contempt via Politico:
"The House Judiciary Committee has taken its first formal step toward holding Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena for special counsel Robert Mueller's unredacted report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, as well as the underlying evidence.
Former Trump counsel Don McGahn, who cooperated with the Mueller probe and is cited 115 times in the unredacted version of its report, is supposed to turn over documents responding to more than three dozen questions stemming from his testimony today.
In a move that left a lot of observers scratching their heads at the time, the President waived executive privilege, allowing McGahn to testify. Now the White House is trying to reassert its privilege. They’re gonna need tots of luck explaining that to a judge, unless the bench is occupied by one of the administration’s selections for the judiciary.
From ABC News:
The White House has instructed former White House counsel Donald McGahn not to comply with a subpoena from House Democrats for documents related to the special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, according to a letter sent Tuesday from White House counsel Pat Cipollone to McGahn's attorney William Burck…
In a separate letter to lawmakers on Tuesday, Cipollone argues that “McGahn does not have the legal right to disclose these documents to third parties” and asks that instead of directing the request for documents to McGahn’s attorney the committee direct the request to the White House.
In a letter to lawmakers obtained by ABC News, McGahn’s attorney says the White House has “directed McGahn not produce the documents “because they implicate significant Executive Branch confidentiality interests and executive privilege.”
https://twitter.com/ryanlcooper/status/1125793352560070656
Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller is reportedly set to testify before the House of Representatives on May 15. The President is reportedly seeking a way to block the appearance:
Via the Washington Post:
President Trump said Sunday that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III should not testify before Congress, reversing course from his previous position that the decision is up to Attorney General William P. Barr.
“Bob Mueller should not testify,” Trump said in an afternoon tweet. “No redos for the Dems!”
Trump also insisted that Mueller’s 448-page report found “no collusion” and “no obstruction,” overstating the conclusions of the nearly two-year investigation. A redacted version of the document has been released; congressional Democrats are battling with Barr to get the full report.
On Monday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin rejected House Democrats’ request for President Donald Trump’s tax returns, failing for the third time to meet a congressional deadline to turn over the documents.
This is another winnable battle for Congressional investigators, as the statute allowing the request says the chairs of the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee and the Joint Committee on Taxation have the authority to seek the president's returns.
Via NBC News:
Under Section 6103 of the U.S. tax code, if Neal or Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee or the head of the Joint Committee on Taxation formally requests a person’s tax returns, Treasury officials “shall” turn the documents over, according to David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and expert on tax law.
In a recent column for The Daily Beast, Johnston wrote that that section of the federal law doesn’t have any “wiggle room” that would protect Trump’s tax returns from being released.
Sadly, the legal battles involving the Trump Presidency could easily go on past the 2020 elections. And at that point they may be irrelevant.
The administration and its supporters are now floating the idea that an additional two years of the presidency are “owed” to Donald Trump as 'reparations' for the distraction of the investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi raised the spectre of Trump refusing to accept the results of the 2020 elections, according to a story in the New York Times:
In recent weeks, Ms. Pelosi has told associates that she does not automatically trust the president to respect the results of any election short of an overwhelming defeat. That view, fed by Mr. Trump’s repeated and unsubstantiated claims of Democratic voter fraud, is one of the reasons she says it is imperative not to play into the president’s hands, especially on impeachment.
The Congresswoman from San Francisco has a point, namely that polling shows the American people are not yet supporting the act of impeachment. Surveys taken after the redacted version of the Mueller report’s release show only 34% and 37% support for moving to impeachment.
She forgets, however, the change in the public’s perception that occurred during the run up to President Nixon’s resignation. To be sure, a vote on impeachment this week isn’t a wise course. But neither is doing nothing.
I’m hoping Pelosi’s reticence is political theater, namely creating a narrative by which she becomes convinced.
The process leading up to deciding to act on impeachment is another story. And we need for that process to be televised, as Fred Wertheimer, founder and president of Democracy 21 suggests:
Today’s House Judiciary Committee’s investigation of Trump mirrors that initial approach taken by the Senate Watergate Committee.
It is a mistake to assume that the American people know the many important details of Trump’s wrongdoing revealed in the 448-page Mueller report. That is why this story must be told to the American people through televised congressional hearings. The Mueller report’s printed words of Trump’s wrongdoings must be brought to life through televised hearings and other media formats, just as the story of Nixon’s wrongdoings was told through the Senate Watergate hearings.
In this age of the internet and social media, more than 20 million Americans watched on television the Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh. And that number does not include the millions more who streamed it on their phones and computers or who watched in public places. Similarly, 19.5 million Americans watched on television the June 2017 testimony of former FBI Director James Comey before Congress about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Millions more watched on live streams.
Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the establishment Democrats aren’t immune to public sentiment. As the administration continues along the path of obstruction and obfuscation the need for street protests is becoming more clear.
Stay tuned.
https://twitter.com/Amy_Siskind/status/1125816632671199233
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