WTF Community

The Impeachment of President Donald J. Trump

Thanks, it’s getting harder to tell what’s new because all the stories read the same. I often have to go back and forth to make sure it’s not the same committee or chairperson.

We may not find out but at least Congress is starting to receive the material they need. :+1:

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Yes, we have many layers piled on at this point.

Thank you for doing the fact check…(I didn’t obvs)

Above all, I was just struck that Dems, primarily now Judiciary Committee are getting more teeth into the inquiry process/fact gathering/Mueller Report exposure and NOW holding Barr’s feet to the fire, and will not let him at least get penalized for it.

And getting John Dean to testify as a way to keep up the pressure…and memories may be short about how significant he was in tipping over the public opinion, and in time ultimately getting to those incriminating tapes.

"I began by telling the president that there was a cancer growing on the presidency and that if the cancer was not removed the president himself would be killed by it. John Dean

And happily

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As the keeper of the facts :sunglasses:, why are these committees giving these people so many chances? I would have expected the contempt vote immediately after the no show.

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The Committee Chairs are supposed to exhaust all normal avenues of seeking testimony or documents before holding a committee vote in contempt, plus it strengthens their case in court.

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White House instructs Hope Hicks, former McGahn aide not to comply with congressional subpoenas

The White House instructed former president Trump aide Hope Hicks and the ex-counsel’s chief of staff not to cooperate with a congressional subpoena for documents related to their White House service.

The House Judiciary Committee last month issued a compulsory measure to one of Trump’s closest staffers and longtime aides, Hicks, and Donald McGahn’s staffer, Annie Donaldson, as part of its expansive probe into potential abuse of power, public corruption and obstruction.

Both faced a Tuesday deadline to turn over documents and have been subpoenaed to appear for testimony later in June.

In a statement, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), chairman of the committee, said the two were told not to cooperate.

“As part of President Trump’s continued obstruction of Congress, the White House has instructed both Hope Hicks and Annie Donaldson not to turn over records in response to subpoenas issued by our committee last month,” Nadler said. “I note that Ms. Hicks has agreed to turn over some documents to the committee related to her time working for the Trump campaign, and I thank her for that show of good faith.”

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Adding this thank you

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Double posting.

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I hope so…she may be selective on these. Just noting that she/WH will have final discretion I believe …and odd at this juncture that Emmet Flood, the president’s lawyer on the Russia stuff is leaving. He argued that T had executive privilege about distributing any documents, despite T’s previous stance and NOT taking executive privilege.

Hope has stayed very T friendly…and even encouraged to come back in I believe. Doesn’t she work for Fox News in LA…?

and now people are wondering why she has any “privileged” documents anyway.

Flood’s departure had been expected after Mueller concluded his investigation in March, as his main role was helping manage the White House’s responses to Mueller’s work. But even after the inquiry concluded, Flood had played a key role in decisions about how the White House handled requests from Congress for investigation-related documents.

For example, in an April 19 letter to Attorney General William P. Barr, Flood criticized Mueller’s final report for failing to “comply with the requirements of governing law.” He said the president’s decision not to assert executive privilege over the report did not mean he was prevented from doing so now to block Congress from compelling aides to testify or to stop lawmakers from accessing underlying investigative materials.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/emmet-flood-white-house-lawyer-brought-on-to-help-navigate-russia-investigation-to-depart-june-14-trump-says/2019/06/01/9d69bae6-84a6-11e9-933d-7501070ee669_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.25cec1504f87

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Maggie posted the letter from her lawyers. They included a log of the emails threads. Read it, they’ve agreed to turn these over. It’s all in the Mueller Report anyways. This would just confirm it and provide evidence.

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Good sleuthing…thanks. :mag_right:

But they still could be in limbo perhaps…all TBD.

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Some Democrats in Congress say Neal is being smart by declining to request Trump’s New York state tax returns, claiming that taking this cautious approach will protect the legal process by which Neal is attempting to obtain Trump’s Federal tax returns. I’m not in that camp. I’m with Maxine Waters and I say, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”

House Democrats clamoring for Donald Trump’s tax information have eagerly awaited a newly passed New York law allowing limited access to the president’s state returns.

They’re about to be sorely disappointed.

House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal would be the only Democrat allowed by the new law to ask for the documents, but so far he has said he won’t do it.

Neal has said he fears that getting the state returns would bolster Trump administration arguments that Congress is on a political fishing expedition – and not, as Neal has claimed, overseeing the Internal Revenue Service’s annual audits of the president.

But Neal’s patience may wear thin if a lengthy legal battle with the Trump administration looms while the 2020 presidential campaign heats up and Democratic voters want to see the House hold Trump accountable. …

Some of Neal’s colleagues have little interest in legal nuance and say the state tax returns are better than none at all. They’re pointing to the measure passed recently by the New York State Legislature, which Governor Andrew Cuomo is widely expected to sign.

“Whatever it takes to get it – I’m for it,” said House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters, a California Democrat. “I believe that the president of the United States should follow the tradition of other presidents and reveal his tax returns.”

Neal has asked Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin three times for six years of Trump’s federal personal and business returns, citing a 1924 law that allows the chairmen of the congressional tax committees to ask and requires the Treasury secretary to provide them. When Mnuchin refused the request three times, Neal followed with a subpoena but that, too, was rejected. The battle is expected to end up in court.

“Yes, absolutely, we need to ask” for the New York returns, said Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington State, who co-chairs the House Progressive Caucus. “We need to know. There is an emoluments clause and a Constitution for a reason.”

BTW, this is a Bloomberg report that they have made available without a paywall on their sister publication, “Accounting Today.” Here’s the Bloomberg link for subscribers.

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Interesting tidbit, this the second time Nadler has asked to open an impeachment inquiry and Nancy wants Trump to go to jail. What a meeting, eh?!

Nadler pressed Pelosi to allow his committee to launch an impeachment inquiry against Trump — the second such request he’s made in recent weeks only to be rebuffed by the California Democrat and other senior leaders. Pelosi stood firm, reiterating that she isn’t open to the idea of impeaching Trump at this time.

I don’t want to see him impeached, I want to see him in prison,” Pelosi said, according to multiple Democratic sources familiar with the meeting.

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House Dems plan on using the courts to enforce contempt.

https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/06/06/politics/contempt-of-congress-vote/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2Fsearch%2F%3Fq%3DNadler

House Democrats are planning to vote next week to empower committees to go to court to enforce their subpoenas, a move that will give committee chairmen a powerful tool to hold officials in contempt while bypassing the House floor.

The plan is likely to expedite Democrats’ efforts to fight the Trump administration in court over their subpoenas and could also help vulnerable Democratic lawmakers avoid repeated contempt votes on the House floor, although there are also concerns about implications of the precedent that’s being set.

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Senate Democrats implore the Federal Reserve to investigate Deutsche Bank for money laundering. :smirk:

A group of Democratic senators want top officials at the Federal Reserve to examine whether Deutsche Bank complied with anti-money-laundering and other laws after bank employees flagged transactions tied to President Trump as potentially suspicious.

The request, in a letter sent Thursday, was in response to a New York Times report about specialists at Deutsche Bank recommending that transactions by legal entities controlled by Mr. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, be reported to a federal financial-crime regulator. Managers at the bank rejected their employees’ advice and did not alert the government.

The letter to the Fed chairman, Jerome H. Powell, and John C. Williams, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, called on the Fed to look into the transactions and whether the bank’s handling of the matter adhered to anti-money-laundering laws. The Fed is one of the main regulators of Deutsche Bank’s American operations.

Only by conducting a thorough review of the full range of this activity can we better understand what happened in these cases; what practices, procedures, or personnel may need to be changed at the bank; and what regulators should do to ensure the Federal Reserve’s ability effectively to monitor compliance with anti-money laundering laws,” the senators wrote.

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Missed this one because I thought I already posted but I guess I just read it and closed the tab. :woman_facepalming:t2: Thx @matt

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Schiff cuing up the hits from Mueller’s vol. 1 of the report. Should be good tv.

Washington, DC – As part of a series of open hearings on the Mueller Report, on Wednesday, June 12, 2019 at 9:00 am, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence will hold an open hearing — “Lessons from the Mueller Report: Counterintelligence Implications of Volume 1.” The Committee will hear testimony from Stephanie Douglas and Robert Anderson, both former Executive Assistant Directors of the National Security Branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

As part of this series of hearings and testimony, the Committee plans to speak with fact witnesses, national security experts, and others connected to the Special Counsel’s investigation to elucidate the issues and findings in the first volume of the report. This is the second open hearing in the series; the first focused on the Kremlin’s use of oligarchs and money to influence foreign actors. A subsequent hearing will explore the facts discussed in the report about Russian intrusions into U.S. elections infrastructure. The Committee also plans to consider targeted legislative initiatives designed to respond to the counterintelligence concerns highlighted by Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) stated:

“Since the release of the Mueller report, the American public has learned much about the President’s conduct, his campaign’s interactions with Russia and that nation’s interference in our election and affairs. The evidence has been both criminal and non-criminal, and implicated deep counterintelligence concerns over the potential compromise of U.S. persons. Our Committee’s goal will be to explain to the American people the serious counterintelligence concerns raised by the Mueller Report, examine the depth and breadth of the unethical and unpatriotic conduct it describes, and produce prescriptive remedies to ensure that this never happens again. That is a tall task, but it begins with a detailed focus on the facts laid out in the Special Counsel’s report.”

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The Judiciary and Intelligence Committee’s are heating up this week. Oversight Committee showing some movement too.

This week:

House Judiciary Hearing: Monday, June 10, 2pm

House Intelligence Hearing: Wednesday, June 12, 2019 at 9:00 am

House Oversight Hearing: TBD

On Monday at 2 p.m. ET, the Judiciary panel will hold the first of a series of hearings on the Mueller report — though the star witness himself won’t be present. Mueller, who had been negotiating with the committee about providing testimony about his two-year investigation to Congress, recently made clear that does not want or plan to speak further about the investigation. Still, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said last week that he’s “confident” the special counsel will come speak to Congress soon — and is prepared to soon issue a subpoena to compel him, if necessary

[…]

Separately, the House Intelligence Committee will hold a rare open hearing on the counterintelligence implications of the Mueller report, in which Stephanie Douglas and Robert Anderson, former executive assistant directors of the FBI’s national security branch, are scheduled testify.

[…]

On Tuesday, the House will vote on a resolution to enforce the subpoenas for Barr and McGahn. The Judiciary Committee had voted in early May to advance a measure to hold Barr in contempt after Trump exerted executive privilege over the unredacted version of the Mueller report. The committee vote was the "culmination of nearly three months of requests, discussions and negotiations with the Department of Justice,” Nadler said at the time, for the report and its underlying evidence.

[…]

Democrats have issued at least 25 subpoenas this year targeting the Trump administration. Administration officials again defied Democrats’ subpoena power late last week when Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross failed to produce documents to the House Oversight Committee regarding the citizenship question on the 2020 census.

Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., has said that he plans to move forward with holding both officials in contempt. “We gave Attorney General Barr and Secretary Ross every opportunity to produce the documents the Committee needs for our investigation, but rather than cooperate, they have decided that they would rather be held in contempt of Congress," he said in a statement. "They produced none of the documents we asked for, they made no counter-offers regarding these documents, and they seem determined to continue the Trump Administration’s cover-up.”

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Watch :eyes: today at 2pm E

House Judiciary Hearing on Lessons from Mueller Report

Former White House Counsel John Dean as well as former U.S. attorneys and legal experts testify about lessons learned from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

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:clap::clap::clap:

The Justice Department, after weeks of tense negotiations, has agreed to provide Congress with key evidence collected by Robert S. Mueller III that could shed light on possible obstruction of justice and abuse of power by President Trump, the House Judiciary Committee said on Monday.

The exact scope of the material the Justice Department has agreed to provide was not immediately clear, though the committee signaled that it could be a breakthrough after weeks of wrangling over those materials and others that the Judiciary panel demanded under subpoena. The Trump administration’s blockade of the material had ground the Democratic investigations of Mr. Trump’s possible obstruction of justice and abuse of power to a halt.

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:eyes: Committee aide says the contempt vote is still on for tomorrow…

And now Nadler via twitter

NPR has the story,

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