The House Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved a dozen new subpoenas targeting a who’s who of witnesses cited in Robert S. Mueller III’s report as Democrats sought to elevate their showdown with President Trump over episodes of possible obstruction of justice documented by the special counsel.
The panel also approved a separate group of subpoenas seeking information about the Trump administration’s practice of separating children from their families at the border. And House Democratic leaders set Tuesday for a full House vote to hold Attorney General William P. Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt of Congress over their refusal to relinquish documents related to the administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
Cross posting thanks 
@matt I maxed out the character count in the header. I was 2,000 over the 70,000 max. 
I have this backed up locally. Any suggestions on how I should proceed? I could spilt it into monthly threads? Or individual committees? Or create a new companion wiki thread and leave this thread a posting thread?
Former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is offering to postpone his congressional testimony by one week to give lawmakers more time to question him about his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice by President Trump.
Mueller is scheduled to appear before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees on July 17 in a much-anticipated public appearance since he gave a short statement following the conclusion of his nearly two-year investigation. Mueller is perhaps the one person lawmakers and the nation have been wanting to hear from the most.
His offer to appear instead on July 24 is being considered by the congressional panels, according to multiple officials familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity Friday to discuss sensitive talks.
The House voted Friday to curb President Trump’s ability to strike Iran militarily on Friday, adopting a bipartisan provision that would require the president to get Congress’s approval before authorizing military force against Tehran.
The 251-170 vote reflects lawmakers’ growing desire to take back long-ceded authority over matters of war and peace from the executive branch, a reclamation legislators contend has grown increasingly urgent amid escalating tensions with Iran. It also reflected a war weariness on both sides of the aisle after 17 years of conflict in the Middle East; 27 Republicans joined all but seven Democrats to approve it.
Last month, Mr. Trump led the United States to the brink of a retaliatory missile strike before abruptly reversing course minutes before launch. On Thursday, three Iranian boats briefly tried to block passage of a British tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, according to Britain’s Ministry of Defense.
Mr. Trump said last month he believes he does not need congressional approval to strike Iran. The vote Friday amounted to a pointed and bipartisan rebuttal — led by strange ideological bedfellows, Representatives Ro Khanna, a liberal Democrat from California, and Matt Gaetz of Florida, one of Mr. Trump’s most strident Republican allies in Congress.
House Oversight Committee Report on Child Separations by the Trump Administration
Missed this story last week…
Senate investigators have added yet another name to the constantly evolving cast of characters in the Russia investigation.
On April 5, just 2 weeks after Special Counsel Robert Mueller submitted his final report on Russia’s election interference, the Senate Intelligence Committee sent a letter to a British security consultant named Walter Soriano asking for a voluntary, closed-door interview and documents with various Russia probe figures dating back to June 2015.
[…]
“They’re surprised by how connected he seems to several people of interest,” this person said, including the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska — a former business associate of Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who offered Deripaska private briefings about the campaign in 2016. Deripaska is believed to have worked with Soriano on corporate intelligence matters, this person said.
A Democratic lawmaker says he will force a vote on articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump by next week, a dramatic step that could force the Democrat-led House to consider the measure for the first time, even over the objection of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“The President of the United States is a racist, a bigot, a misogynist, as well as an invidious prevaricator. To say that Donald John Trump is unfit for the Office of the President of the United States is an understatement," said Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), who cited Trump’s racist tweets over the weekend about Democratic congresswomen as the impetus for his third effort to push through an impeachment vote.
Green forced two votes on impeachment articles in 2017 and 2018, when Republicans ran the House, citing similar controversies, including Trump’s comments about demonstrators in Charlottesville and his description of African nations as “shithole countries.”
In both cases, about 60 of Green’s colleagues joined him to support advancing the impeachment measure, but the moves were easily defeated, with most Democrats describing it as premature. Since then, former special counsel Robert Mueller issued a report providing compelling evidence that Trump attempted to obstruct his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, leading dozens more of Green’s Democratic colleagues to embrace an impeachment inquiry.
White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway on Monday defied a congressional subpoena, refusing to show up for testimony to the House Oversight and Reform Committee about her violations of the Hatch Act and prompting House Democrats to threaten to hold her in contempt of Congress.
In a letter to Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the chairman of the panel, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone asserted the Trump administration’s long-standing view that current and former presidential advisers are “absolutely immune” from congressional testimony, writing: “Ms. Conway cannot be compelled to testify before Congress with respect to matters related to her service as a senior adviser to the president.”
Oy! Sorry I missed this! First, this is incredible work!
I bumped up the total post size as an interim step, so you should be able to update the header now.
We could use the header in this thread as an index + the general congressional news and Other Related House and Senate Committees list, then spin off each committee investigation into its own wiki topic, which would result in something like this:
Congressional Committee Investigations into Trump 2019
- General congressional news
- Other Related House and Senate Committees
Separate topics:
- Judiciary Committee Investigations into Trump 2019
- Oversight And Reform Committee Investigations into Trump 2019
- Ways And Means Committee
- Financial Services Committee
What do you think?
It’s simple and clear. Hopefully I’ll find a block of time to lay this out this week. Thanks
Cross posting
Cross posting
Letter from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Nadler to Hope Hicks dated July 18th, 2019.
House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler wrote to Hicks asking if she wanted to voluntarily clarify her testimony, saying the new evidence “raises substantial questions about the accuracy” of several statements she made.
In her appearance last month before the Judiciary Committee, Hicks said “no” when asked multiple times by Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee whether Hicks was ever present when Trump and Cohen discussed Daniels, according to a transcript released of the closed-door interview.
She also said she had no information about Daniels other than what she learned from reporters.
"Again, I had no knowledge of Stormy Daniels other than to say she was going to be mentioned in the story amongst people that were shopping stories around," Hicks testified. "There were no specifics offered by the reporter, and I didn’t have any other information other than what was being relayed to me by the reporter."
She said she denied the affair in a 2016 statement to the press because "that was the response that was dictated to me."
Unredacted Documents Released in Cohen Case
Search warrants made public Thursday show that the FBI believed then-candidate Donald Trump spoke with his attorney Michael Cohen and aide Hope Hicks during the 2016 campaign about silencing news stories related to his alleged affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
Why it matters: The Southern District of New York’s investigation into hush money payments, which has now concluded, resulted in Cohen being sentenced to prison for three years for campaign finance violations. Trump — who was previously referred to in court documents as “Individual 1” — has denied allegations of his involvement in the scheme.
What they’re saying:
"I have learned that in the days following the Access Hollywood video, Cohen exchanged a series of calls, text messages and emails with Keith Davidson, who was then Clifford’s attorney, David Pecker and Dylan Howard of American Media, Inc. (“AMI”), the publisher of the National Enquirer, Trump, and Hope Hicks, who was then press secretary for Trump’s presidential campaign.
“Based on the timing of these calls, and the content of the text messages and emails, I believe that at least some of these communications concerned the need to prevent Clifford from going public, particularly in the wake of the Access Hollywood story.”
— Unnamed FBI agent
Watch: Acting Homeland Security Secretary Testifies on Migrant Children Policy
Highlighted Clip:
Chairman Cummings Criticizes DHS Secretary Over Treatment of Children at Border
During a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on treatment of migrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border, committee chair Elijah Cummings (D-MD) chastises Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan over declining living conditions for minors at the border. The chairman cites on instance at a particular facility where some children were sleeping near their own feces, saying the impact one them will last for decades.
Watch here
Reminder: Next Wednesday Mueller Testifies!!
Mueller is expected to appear publicly Wednesday for three hours before the Judiciary Committee followed by roughly two hours before the House Intelligence Committee.
Letter from House Committee on Oversight and Reform Chairman Cummings to SDNY Attorney Strauss dated July 19th, 2019, with regards to the Cohen case concerning the hush money payments from President Trump to various sex workers.
Chairman Cummings asking specifically if the SDNY followed the OLC policy of not indicting a sitting president. Now we wait with baited breath.
https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/07/19/politics/democrats-mueller-preparation/index.html
As part of their strategy, Democrats plan to hone in on five areas of the Mueller report where they think the President clearly obstructed justice, including his efforts to fire the special counsel and to tamper with witnesses like his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, the aides said.
Democrats also plan to press Mueller on the contacts with Russia and WikiLeaks detailed in the report, in the hopes that Mueller’s testimony can combat the President’s constant of “no collusion.”
[…]
Episodes of alleged obstruction
Democratic Judiciary Committee aides say they plan to use their testimony to connect the dots that were laid out in the volume two of the Mueller report, highlighting at least five episodes they feel could have been chargeable obstruction of justice offenses:
- Trump’s direction to White House counsel Don McGahn to fire the special counsel.
- Trump’s direction to McGahn to publicly deny that Trump had told him to fire Mueller.
- Trump’s direction to former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to tell Attorney General Jeff Sessions to limit the investigation to exclude the President and only focus on future campaigns
- Trump’s followup direction to Lewandowski to tell Sessions he will fire him if he doesn’t meet with Lewandowski
- Trump’s alleged witness tampering of Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen and others, including encouraging them not to cooperate, dangling pardons and congratulating Manafort for not flipping.
House Intelligence Committee aides, meanwhile, say they plan to focus on the contacts with Russians and WikiLeaks highlighted in volume one of the report, including Trump’s knowledge of the WikiLeaks’ email dump ahead of time and the President’s touting of the stolen emails more than 100 times.
Their task is complicated by the fact that the section on Russian election interference is more complex, and some of the material is redacted, which is why that panel was pushing for a closed session with Mueller’s deputies where they could discuss classified information.
“A lot of attitudes have hardened on the subject of Trump and Russia and obstruction of justice, but nonetheless, if there’s anyone who can cast a new light on this issue, it’s the man who did the investigation and probably holds unique credibility with the public,” said House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff.
The California Democrat added: “Up until now, they’ve only had the Mueller report filtered through people like (Attorney General) Bill Barr, who misrepresented it. So it’s going to be vitally important for the public to hear from Mueller about how the Russians systematically interfered in our election, how the Trump campaign welcomed it, made use of it, and then lied about it to cover it up. That’s all very powerful.”