Cross-posting 
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Here it comes…the Senate Republicans wanting to authorize 41 depositions and subpoenas in two Senate GOP investigations…one for Obama and the other about Hunter Biden.
It relates to the election, and making it clear that T was unfairly spied on…(he wasn’t) and smear Joe Biden.
What a waste of time…and what allegiances they have.
From May 2020
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Rep Engel of the Foreign Affairs Committee getting testimony the firing of the State Dept IG. On C-span
https://www.c-span.org/video/?475765-1/house-hearing-state-department-ig-firing
Relates to the sales of weapons
Engel Releases Records Showing State Department’s Attempt to Hide Facts in OIG Arms Sales Report
statement from Rep Engel
The records we received today show just how hard the State Department wanted to hide the truth about last year’s phony emergency declaration. The picture is starting to come into focus: a top priority at Mike Pompeo’s State Department was to go around Congress to sell weapons, and his senior aides worked hard after the fact to obscure their indifference to civilian casualties. Inspector General Steve Linick must have been quite a thorn in Mr. Pompeo’s side before Mr. Pompeo had him fired. Thankfully, the OIG staff carried the work forward with integrity. We look forward to hearing from Mr. Cooper tomorrow,” said Chairman Engel.
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Press Release: House Chairs Demand Emergency Inspector General Investigation Into AG Barr’s Efforts to Improperly Influence November Presidential Election
Washington, September 18, 2020
Washington, D.C. – Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY), and House Administration Committee Chairperson Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) called on the Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General to open an emergency investigation into whether Attorney General William Barr, U.S. Attorney John Durham, and other political appointees are in violation of longstanding Department policy and federal law to avoid taking any action–including making public comments on ongoing investigations –that could improperly influence the upcoming presidential election.
“Under longstanding DOJ policy, the Attorney General is expected to refrain from commenting on an ongoing investigation. Attorney General Barr and U.S. Attorney Durham have made several public comments that could violate this Department policy and related guidelines. Attorney General Barr has signaled repeatedly that he is likely to allow DOJ to take prosecutorial actions, make public disclosures, and even issue reports before the presidential election in November. Such actions clearly appear intended to benefit President Trump politically,” the members wrote to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
The members continued, “Few actions would prove more damaging to public confidence in the integrity of the DOJ and our democratic process than the perception that federal prosecutorial power can be used to prejudice a pending investigation or influence an upcoming election. As such, we believe it is imperative that this matter be immediately investigated, that you inform our Committees of your decision to open an investigation, and that you report the results promptly to our Committees.”
Full text of the letter is available here
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Cross-posting 
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Report: Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Corruption: The Impact on U.S. Government Policy and Related Concerns
U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and U.S. Senate Committee on Finance Majority Staff Report
Check out the footnotes for the references. It’s a lot of The Hill’s Solomon and the Washington Examiner. 
This is a very low quality report.
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GOP senators’ report calls Hunter Biden’s board position with Ukraine firm ‘problematic,’ but fails to show how it changed U.S. policy
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) co-authored the report, which comes just weeks before the Nov. 3 election, and just days before President Trump and former vice president Biden face off in the first presidential debate.
Much of the Republican report rehashes information that was already a key part of the GOP defense during the impeachment proceedings against Trump last year. The report concludes that “Hunter Biden’s position on Burisma’s board was problematic and did interfere in the efficient execution of policy with respect to Ukraine,” while charging that he and other Biden relatives “cashed in on Joe Biden’s vice presidency.”
But at the same time, the report states that “the extent to which Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board affected U.S. policy toward Ukraine is not clear.”
Top-ranking Democratic senators slammed the GOP report, saying its key findings were false and “rooted in a known Russian disinformation effort.” The accumulated testimony, they argued, showed no wrongdoing by Joe Biden.
“Chairman Johnson repeatedly impugned Vice President Biden in public on the basis of secret evidence he claimed to have obtained,” the Democrats said in their competing report, rebutting Johnson’s conclusion. “Contrary to his public insinuations, the Chairmen’s investigation found no evidence that the former vice president did anything wrong in his efforts to carry out official U.S foreign policy in Ukraine.”
The Democrats added: “All first-hand witnesses testified that Hunter Biden’s position of the board of Burisma had no impact whatsoever on United States foreign policy.”
Not surprising
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Republican Inquiry Finds No Evidence of Wrongdoing by Biden
The report asserted that Hunter Biden traded off his father’s name to close lucrative business deals around the world, and that his work for Burisma Holdings, a corrupt Ukrainian energy company while the former vice president was directing American policy toward Kyiv gave the appearance of a conflict of interest and alarmed some in the State Department. But the 87-page document released on Wednesday by the Senate Homeland Security Committee contained no evidence that the former vice president improperly manipulated American policy toward Ukraine or committed any other misdeed.
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GOP senators’ anti-Biden report repackages old claims
For a year, Senate Republicans have teased a bombshell investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden that could rock the former vice president’s campaign for the White House.
But an interim report, issued by Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) less than six weeks before the presidential election and released publicly on Wednesday, is largely a compilation of previously public information — some of it rehashed anew by witnesses who already testified during the House’s impeachment inquiry last year — as well as news articles and strongly worded insinuations with little evidence to back them up.
The report, titled “Hunter Biden, Burisma and Corruption,” reprises these year-old claims and adds little new to a discussion first raised by President Donald Trump’s defense team in his impeachment trial before the Senate earlier this year, when the president was acquitted by GOP senators on charges of abusing his power by seeking to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. The report does little to substantiate allegations against the Democratic presidential nominee, which have been fueled in part by foreign actors linked to the Kremlin whom U.S. officials have said are attempting to interfere in the 2020 election.
The report relies on vague assessments already revealed publicly — namely, from top State Department official George Kent, who said Hunter Biden’s role on the board of a Ukrainian energy company was “very awkward” for U.S. officials who were carrying out an anti-corruption policy in Ukraine. Kent made a similar remark during his impeachment testimony last fall.
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Yes he did but he also said a lot of other things that are much more important. Here’s my Kent file, enjoy 
George Kent
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Schiff announces new reforms in this Op-Ed
Adam Schiff: Why my colleagues and I are introducing the first major democracy reforms since Watergate
Having wrested hard-won independence from a monarch, the founders of our nation sought to form a new union where executive power was constrained by other branches of government. They did so knowing that men are not angels, and believing that through a system of checks and balances that set “ambition against ambition,” a fledgling democracy could survive, even thrive.
When Donald Trump was inaugurated in 2017, I was confident that our Constitution and democratic institutions, which had survived the Civil War, terrorist attacks, economic crises and more, could withstand an unscrupulous president. What I did not foresee was the awful degree to which the party of the president would surrender its institutional responsibilities in order to protect its hold on power — and the extent to which this abdication would leave such a president unconstrained.
As we survey the wreckage of the past 3½ years, it’s apparent that the foundation of our democracy has been shaken. Trump has sought to turn the instruments of government to his personal and political advantage, and to an astonishing degree, he has been successful.
He has extorted a foreign partner for dirt on his political opponent, a scheme for which he was impeached. He has interfered in prosecutions of his closest friends and allies, and abused the pardon and commutation powers to help political friends. He has painted the press as the “enemy of the people,” violated the Hatch Act, usurped Congress’ power of the purse to build a wallCongress did not fund, and retaliated against whistleblowers and inspectors general who exposed his wrongdoing and that of others.
Instead of being constrained by norms, Trump has acted as a stress test for our system of checks and balances, probing for where his powers are greatest and accountability is weakest.
Trump is not the first president to seek to accumulate power and punish his enemies. When the crimes of Richard Nixon came to light after Watergate, Congress went to work to prevent such abuses from happening again. In what became known as the post-Watergate reforms, Congress created new checks and balances, including campaign finance reform, disclosure and transparency requirements for public servants, and privacy protections. Congress also established new oversight mechanisms, including the intelligence committees.
At every turn, we have fought Trump’s abuses in the House, in the courts, and in an impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate. And today, we are taking the next step by introducing the first major democracy reform package since Watergate, the Protecting Our Democracy Act. Dozens of members and committees have contributed to this package and its proposals.
These reforms are just the beginning, not the end, of our work to protect and strengthen the guardrails of our democracy, against Trump and future presidents from either party who seek to abuse their power. Our reforms are built on three pillars and they are built to last.
First, we must prevent abuses of presidential power. The president is granted immense authority under the Constitution, but it’s not without limit or accountability. Our reforms would prevent the abuse of the pardon power, as Trump has done when he gave or dangled pardons to his cronies, and make clear that corrupt pardons can be prosecuted as bribery. It would also create a mechanism to enforce the constitutional prohibition on emoluments, which Trump has blatantly disregarded to enrich himself and his family.
Second, we must restore our system of checks and balances, the bedrock of our constitutional system, and ensure accountability and transparency. Our reforms would address a president’s efforts to run out the clock on oversight by providing for expedited enforcement of congressional subpoenas and fines for officials who refuse to cooperate. It would reassert the power of the purse, Congress’ authority over spending, and prevent the abuse of presidential emergency powers.
Finally, we need to protect our elections from foreign interference, because Americans must decide American elections. Our reforms would require political campaigns to report to the FBI suspicious foreign contacts or offers of assistance, and clarify that dirt on an opponent is a “thing of value” that campaigns are prohibited from soliciting or receiving from foreign powers.
These reforms may not be signed into law under this president, but I am confident that they will become law under a future administration, and will soon become enshrined into our understanding of American democracy, just as the post-Watergate reforms did.
Earlier this year, as the House debated impeachment, Speaker Nancy Pelosi quoted Benjamin Franklin. Asked upon exiting the Constitutional Convention what form of government the fledgling United States would have, Franklin said, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Trump has posed exactly the kind of existential threat to our democracy that our founders feared. But we are not powerless to protect our country going forward. With these reforms, we can keep our republic. Our Constitution and our democracy are our sacred heritage. We will not allow them to be degraded or destroyed, by Donald Trump or anyone else.
Adam B. Schiff is the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and represents California’s 28th Congressional District.
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House Democrats unveil changes to ‘prevent future presidential abuses’
House Democrats unveiled a sweeping package of changes Wednesday morning designed to strengthen Congress’s ability to check the executive branch and prevent abuses of power, especially by the president.
The package, which its architects have informally referred to as “post-Trump reforms,” includes measures to restrain the president’s power to grant pardons and declare national emergencies, to prevent federal officials from enriching themselves and to accelerate the process of enforcing congressional subpoenas in court. It also includes provisions to protect inspectors general and whistleblowers, increase penalties for officials who subvert congressional appropriations or engage in overt political activity and safeguard against foreign election interference.
The proposals were introduced at a news conference on Capitol Hill Wednesday morning.
Taken together, the measures represent the Democrats’ attempt to correct what they have identified as systematic deficiencies during the course of President Trump’s tenure and impeachment, in the style of changes Congress adopted after Richard Nixon left office.
Unlike the post-Watergate reforms, however, which took years to enact, today’s House Democrats have collected their proposed changes under one bill reflecting several measures that have been percolating piecemeal through the House.
In a joint statement, seven committee chairs signaled their legislation is intended to “prevent future presidential abuses, restore our checks and balances, strengthen accountability and transparency, and protect our elections.”
“It is time for Congress to strengthen the bedrock of our democracy and ensure our laws are strong enough to withstand a lawless president,” the statement says. “These reforms are necessary not only because of the abuses of this president, but because the foundation of our democracy is the rule of law and that foundation is deeply at risk.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It is unclear precisely when lawmakers would take up the legislation, though it will almost certainly be after November’s election or sometime in the new year.
The Protecting Our Democracy Act, as it is titled, is being rolled out almost a year to the day after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced the House would pursue impeachment charges against the president. It faces long odds in the current Congress, where the Republican-led Senate is all but guaranteed to eschew the legislation.
Yet its release less than six weeks before Election Day signals the changes congressional Democrats envision pursuing under a possible Joe Biden presidency, or if the party seizes a majority of Senate seats in November.
The measure includes several provisions to speed up judicial rulings on congressional subpoenas and emoluments cases, in which the House or Senate alleges that a federal official violated constitutional prohibitions on accepting gifts without congressional permission. The bill states that both types of cases should be decided by a panel of three judges, and that any appeals would go directly to the Supreme Court.
The slow process of judicial review has been a frequent stumbling block for House Democrats attempting to subpoena Trump administration officials, leading the party to decide to avoid court battles entirely during Trump’s impeachment process, for fear of getting bogged down. A suit the House filed last summer to enforce a subpoena against Trump’s former White House counsel Donald McGahn is still working through the appeals process; last month, a federal appeals court panel in Washington, D.C., ruled 2-to-1 against the House, arguing that Congress had not passed a law authorizing itself to sue to enforce subpoenas. The bill unveiled Wednesday expressly gives Congress that authority.
The package mirrors several measures to better regulate the relationship between the White House and Justice Department, which Democrats believe has been too cozy under the leadership of Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr. It reflects a proposal from Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) requiring the attorney general to keep a log of certain communications with the White House and periodically share it with the DOJ inspector general and Congress, and a bill from Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) exempting the time a president or vice president spends in office from the statute of limitations for any federal crime. Nadler’s measure seeks to ensure that the Justice Department’s policy against indicting sitting presidents does not become a means for avoiding prosecution entirely.
The measure also includes several provisions to limit the president’s ability to interfere with congressional appropriations, by putting a time limit on emergency declarations and prohibiting the president from holding back congressionally-approved funding any later than 90 days before it expires — a change that aims to close a loophole the administration has used to effectively cancel unspent funds, particularly foreign aid, near the end of the fiscal year.
The bill incorporates several other pieces of existing legislation as well, such as Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam B. Schiff’s (D-Calif.) measure requiring the administration to give Congress materials related to any pardon within 30 days and expressly prohibiting self-pardoning. It also includes Administration Committee Chairwoman Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s (D-Calif.) measure requiring political committees to report attempted foreign influence operations to the FBI.
Schiff, Nadler and Lofgren are co-authors of the bill, along with Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), Budget Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), Ways and Means Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), and Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.).
Finally, the package includes a new measure inspired by the recent parade of Trump administration officials using their federal office to engage in overt campaigning, a practice that was on stark display during last month’s Republican National Convention. The bill gives the Justice Department’s Office of the Special Counsel express authority to investigate suspected violations of the Hatch Act, and issue fines of up to $50,000 for every violation that the president fails to discipline himself.
The first major democracy reforms since Watergate includes measures dealing with the granting of pardons, declaring national emergencies, preventing self-enrichment, & accelerating enforcement of congressional subpoenas.
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The internet is going wild over Dr. Fauci putting Rand Paul in his place.
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I was only able to watch a few minutes of this circus and it just happened to include this moment. It. Was. Glorious.
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Cross-posting
Also what is up with old comments resurfacing at the end of some of these threads? 
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WTF? Since when did playing nice count? Have these fools watched any hearings with Republicans?
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Hmmm? Lmk what specifically and I’ll figure out what’s going on
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This move from the Democratic House chairs in creating a bill which will act as a guardrail and as an enforceable legal document meant to reinforce Congressional oversight. They hope that Congress cab maintain itself as a check on power for both the Executive and Judicial branches. T’s flagrant misuse of power has prompted the need for this proposed bill.
The Washington Post: Here’s how we can protect democracy from a lawless president
Adam Schiff of California, Jerrold Nadler of New York, Carolyn Maloney of New York, John Yarmuth of Kentucky, Zoe Lofgren of California, Eliot Engel of New York and Richard E. Neal of Massachusetts are all Democratic committee chairs in the U.S. House.
In the years following the Watergate scandal, Congress enacted a series of landmark reforms to protect our democracy and restore Americans’ faith in government. Those reforms — to strengthen transparency and ethics in government, enhance congressional oversight and place significant limits on presidential powers — have stood the test of time. Though some presidents have bridled at those laws or stretched them, they have fundamentally abided by their limits for 50 years.
Until President Trump.
With a lawless president in office who acts as if rules are for suckers, political norms for losers and governing for chumps, it is clear we need a new series of reforms to protect our democracy.
On Wednesday, we are introducing such reforms, which we began drafting more than a year ago not only to address the president’s unique abuses, but also to go beyond them to restore accountability, root out corruption and ensure transparency in government for future White House occupants.
First, we seek to further enshrine the principle that no one is above the law, especially the president. For this reason, we must ensure that presidents cannot use the pardon power to insulate themselves, their family or associates, or to outrun statutes of limitations simply by staying in office.
Our bill requires that the Justice Department provide materials to Congress concerning any self-serving pardon or commutation in cases involving presidents or their relatives, contempt of Congress or obstruction of Congress. Our bill also suspends statutes of limitations for any federal offense committed by a sitting president or vice president, whether it took place before or during their terms in office, to ensure that future presidents cannot “run out the clock” to avoid accountability.
We will also take action to prohibit presidents and their families from abusing the office to enrich themselves, by providing an enforcement mechanism for violations of the emoluments clauses, increasing penalties and enhancing financial disclosure requirements.
Second, we seek to restore our system of checks and balances and strengthen accountability and transparency. Trump has obstructed congressional oversight, targeted whistleblowers who speak out against him and fired officials whose responsibility is to objectively investigate wrongdoing in the federal government.
Congress needs to obtain documents and hear from witnesses to do our jobs. Our bill will strengthen Congress’s tools to expeditiously enforce subpoenas in court, and will enhance foundational budget laws, such as the Impoundment Control Act, by adding meaningful reporting requirements and improving congressional oversight.
We must also reclaim Congress’s power of the purse from an overzealous executive branch, increase transparency around government spending and ensure there are consequences to deter the misuse of taxpayer funds. Our bill will prevent the executive branch from using nonpublic documents or secret legal opinions to circumvent Congress and unilaterally enact its agenda behind closed doors. Our bill will impose limits on presidential declarations of emergencies and any powers triggered by such declarations, unless extended by a congressional vote, and require the president to provide all documents regarding presidential emergency actions to Congress.
We must also strengthen safeguards meant to keep public officials from using their positions to benefit the president politically or personally. To do this, our bill would require additional reporting of communications between the Justice Department and the White House; prohibit at-will firing of inspectors general; grant whistleblowers the right to sue in court if they are publicly outed; amend the qualification requirements for acting officials of executive agencies and limit their tenure to 120 days; and strengthen the penalties for Hatch Act violations for senior political appointees.
The president’s unprecedented and largely successful efforts to stonewall Congress through the courts, including preventing oversight of his financial entanglements and conflicts of interest, demonstrate both the need to provide an effective system of oversight in the courts and to obtain more information so we can continue to refine and develop these and other reforms.
And finally, we seek to protect our elections from foreign interference and influence. We must require that all campaigns report offers of help from foreign governments and foreign political parties to law enforcement. We must also provide unequivocal language in statute that campaigns cannot accept foreign help or information for political advantage, including opposition research.
This is where we begin, but it is not where we will end. Democrats have already passed landmark reforms to expand and protect the right to vote, limit the influence of big money in politics and create a more transparent, accountable and ethical government. Now we take an important step further, to strengthen our democratic institutions from an unscrupulous executive.
The damage Trump has carelessly inflicted on our democracy cannot be completely undone, but it can be stopped. Like the reforms passed after Watergate rocked our nation, the critical reforms we are introducing today may take time to come to fruition. But they will become law when elected representatives choose to protect our democracy and uphold their oaths of office — even if the person who occupies the Oval Office does not.
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I deleted it because it wasn’t important but this post keeps popping up after I post on this thread.