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The Impeachment of President Donald J. Trump

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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:face_with_raised_eyebrow:

https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/06/10/politics/russia-investigation-start-doj/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FyuT3vGichu%3Famp%3D1

Attorney General William Barr’s review of the beginnings of the Russia probe will be “broad in scope and multifaceted” and will examine actions by US and foreign intelligence agencies, “as well as non-governmental organizations and individuals.”

The description was contained in a letter from the Justice Department to House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler and released Monday just as the committee began a separate hearing on the Mueller Report.

The attorney general, while not specifying in this letter, has previously signaled that his review will include an examination of ex-British spy Christopher Steele’s work compiling research about President Donald Trump and his associates and commissioned by Fusion GPS, a research and investigative firm.

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What a transparent attempt to distract from what we really should be focusing on. Our country is in mortal peril – our democratic elections are under attack and instead of concentrating on that, the head of our Justice Department (along with the Republicans who installed him) are investigating the whistle blowers? Say what??? – On top of that, they’re casting about for legal technicalities to get the traitors off the hook.

I’ve posted this before, but I swear I’m printing it out and tacking it on the wall above my desk so I can look at it every time I see an article about Barr’s “investigation of the investigators” – And as long as Trump and Barr are in charge, you can bet there will be a lot more of them. Grrrrr… :angry:

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THIS is interesting video, based apparently on the Muller Report and today’s testimony with John Dean:

Former US attorney and now Michigan law professor Barb McQuade just had an interesting interaction with Florida Democrat and committee member Ted Deutch.

They talked about events detailed in Robert Mueller’s report that Donald Trump asked then White House counsel Don McGahn to call then deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein and order him to “get rid” of special counsel Mueller. And then the president asked McGahn to lie about that, despite multiple urgings from Trump that he “change his recollection” about their exchange.

McQuade tells the committee that Mueller’s report that Trump asked McGahn to create a false document about their exchange regarding Mueller is “the most serious allegation.”

“This constitutes obstruction of justice” by the president, McQuade says.

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Anyone else having trouble with http://c-span.org ? Seems to be down…

It’s back.

Watch part 2 here :point_down:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?461399-3/house-judiciary-hearing-lessons-mueller-report-part-2&live

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The Daily Beast buried the lead here. The big takeaway is that even though the Judiciary Committee can now view documents from the Mueller investigation, Trump can still block access to crucial evidence by claiming “privilege.”

The Beast calls this a “hiccup” – I’d call it another major roadblock and an opportunity for more obstruction by the President. Will Trump play the “privilege” card once again – this time to negate Nadler’s recent victory in gaining access to the Mueller documents? We need to keep an eagle eye on how this plays out. I hope Judiciary Committee members immediately start culling through the documents in order to test this potentially obstructive maneuver by Trump and Barr. If they’re going down that road, let’s call them out right now.

Members of the House Judiciary Committee will be able to take notes on Mueller investigation evidence, and keep those notes after viewing the closely held documents, The Daily Beast has learned.

There may be a hiccup, however: A source familiar with the situation cautioned that the White House will likely have access to any evidence that could implicate its equities and executive privilege, and may try to step in and block members of Congress from seeing material it deems privileged.

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:eyes: Watch :point_down:

House Session

The House debates and votes on a resolution authorizing the Judiciary Committee to pursue court action on subpoenas issued for former and current Trump administration officials.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?461461-3/us-house-debate-enforcing-subpoenas

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Cross posting

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Watching the live House floor feed now…

:boom: It’s a done deal. It passed! :clap: :clap: :clap: :partying_face:

Yea: 229
Nay: 191

Democrats now have a powerful new tool to fiercely fight Trump’s shameful, ongoing obstruction of justice. :muscle: :fist:

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The appearance of the President’s eldest son Wednesday comes after a lengthy and contentious fight that spilled into public view after the committee issued a subpoena to Trump Jr. and he initially balked at testifying for a second time. …

The committee is interested in hearing again from Trump Jr. because of discrepancies between his testimony in 2017 and what other witnesses have told both the committee and the special counsel’s office.

Trump Jr. appeared before the Senate Intelligence, Senate Judiciary and House Intelligence Committees in 2017, and the release of the Mueller report prompted a new round questions about what Trump Jr. told the Senate Judiciary panel, which released a transcript of his interview.

Trump Jr. testified he only told Kushner and campaign chairman Paul Manafort ahead of time about the Trump Tower meeting in which a Russian attorney promised dirt on Hillary Clinton. But then-campaign deputy Rick Gates, who pleaded guilty in the special counsel probe, told Mueller that Trump Jr. talked about a lead on negative information about the Clinton Foundation at a campaign meeting in the days before the Trump Tower meeting.

Trump Jr.'s testimony on the Trump Tower Moscow project has also been scrutinized, in which he said he was “peripherally aware” of the project. But Mueller’s report says Cohen testified he discussed the project on multiple occasions with Trump Jr. and that the discussions were not just "idle chit chat."

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