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Trump's re-election prospects hinge on the economy and jobs, jobs, jobs. This latest report turns some frowns upside down, although the global economy remains fraught.
On the impeachment front, the White House is reportedly about to emphasize a point I ranted about in late September: Unlike with the precedent set by Nixon and Clinton, there has not been a full House vote authorizing an impeachment inquiry.
The NY Times explainer from mid-September is a good starting point. The gist - the House can subpoena material as part of their routine oversight responsibilities. They can also subpoena material in the context of an impeachment inquiry. Impeachment related subpoenas carry more weight in Executive Privilege fights. They also have a different legal status - a duly authorized impeachment inquiry has the same status as a judicial inquiry, so the DoJ can transfer normally-secret grand jury material to them.
That grand jury question is being litigated now. The House Judiciary Committee wants the Mueller grand jury testimony; the DoJ says they don't have the standing of a judicial inquiry. Tense times for the judge!
As to rules and precedent, the Times paints an uphill struggle for the Democrats:
The Republicans argue that the Judiciary Committee does not inherently have the authority to conduct a presidential impeachment investigation on its own. The standing rules of the House explicitly outline the panel’s jurisdiction, including the impeachment of judges, but they do not mention presidential impeachments, proving that the two are different, Republicans aides say.
I have not verified that but if its true, the Democratic position must be that the full House explicitly delegated to the Judiciary Committee the power to open an impeachment inquiry into judges and implicitly delegated one of their gravest powers, the ability to initiate an impeachment inquiry into the President. Really?
History is also not helpful for the Pelosi/Nadler position:
This is not exactly your father’s presidential impeachment investigation.
Democrats are deviating in key ways from the way the House launched the two presidential impeachment inquiries of the modern era.
When the Judiciary Committee was investigating whether to impeach President Richard M. Nixon in the 1970s and Bill Clinton in the 1990s, it ultimately sought and received explicit authority to conduct each of those inquiries by a vote of the full House.
In this case, the Judiciary Committee led by Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, has neither asked for nor received such a vote.
[Big Skip and...]
But Democrats’ strategy is not without risk. House parliamentarians, nonpartisan aides who help interpret and enforce the rules of the House, would likely make a more conservative recommendation, people who work with them said. If lawmakers want to ensure that a judge will recognize what they are doing as impeachment, it would be better to follow the most well-worn path.
“They can say they are doing it, but what will a judge think, given the precedent in the past?” said Michael Conway, who served as a Judiciary Committee lawyer in 1974 during the Nixon impeachment.
The Congressional research Service prepared an overview of impeachment, updated August 12, 2019 (Quite a date, yes? Whistleblower conspiracists will gasp!).
This passage from the summary is not helpful to the Pelosi position.
So what has been going on? My madcap speculation is this: Trump's tax returns are a key to this.
The current House effort to get Trump's tax returns by way of a routine oversight subpoena is likely to fail. However, a duly authorized House impeachment inquiry will easily win any court fight to collect Trump's tax returns. That is from law professor Andy Grewal.
So - Team Trump originally released the transcript of the controversial Ukrainian call in part (OK, maybe a small part) to pre-empt a full House impeachment vote authorizing a subpoena of the call transcript. Their fear was (and is) that, with such authority, the House will inevitably subpoena Trump's returns. That pre-emptive release seems to have failed as a PR strategy, so they've shifted course.
And on Pelosi's side of the aisle? Why hasn't she un-muddied the waters and held a vote?
Several reasons. Until recently, the Speaker probably didn't have 218 Democratic votes. Now she does.
But Nancy Pelosi has a dual role - she is Speaker of the House but also Herder of Cats.
As Speaker of the House, she has an eye on history and would like to pick up a few Republicans on a full House impeachment inquiry vote. Thirty-one Democrats crossed over in October 1998 to open an inquiry against Bill Clinton; Pelosi was there and might have that number in mind. I doubt she is near that so far.
As Herder of Cats my guess is that Pelosi, oddly enough, shares a fear with Team Trump. She may be very concerned that the Maddow wing of her party will take the focus off the Ukraine by subpoenaing Trump's tax returns and promptly leak them, irresistibly and illegally.
And with that dive down a rabbit hole the process will collapse amidst mutual accusations of lawlessness and bad faith. But with great CNN ratings!
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