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The Impeachment of President Donald J. Trump

Full House approval would give Barr 14 days to comply with the demand for all records and communications concerning FBI investigations of Trump, as well any discussions within the Justice Department about secretly recording the president or seeking to replace him by invoking the 25th amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That amendment provides the procedures for replacing the president or vice president in the event of death, removal, resignation, or incapacitation.

Lawmakers are looking specifically at obstruction of justice and counterintelligence probes that former FBI Director Andrew McCabe says he launched after Trump fired his predecessor, James Comey, in May 2017.

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Nadler is going subpoena the full report.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the committee chairman, said Monday he’s moving ahead with plans to press for the nearly 400-page Mueller report via subpoena despite written assurances from Attorney General William Barr that he plans to release the document by mid-April or sooner.

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New Letter from Congress to Barr, requesting everything, including all the underlying evidence and Barr’s testimony.

Read the letter :point_down:

https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/democrats.judiciary.house.gov/files/documents/4.1.2019%20Letter%20to%20William%20Barr%20%2B%20appendix.pdf

The House Oversight and Reform Committee on Tuesday voted to authorize three subpoenas as part of Democrats’ increasingly aggressive investigations into the White House security clearance process and the Trump administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

In a party-line vote, the committee authorized Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) to issue a subpoena for former White House Personnel Security Director Carl Kline to testify before the panel about his role in approving security clearances. The panel also authorized subpoenas for documents from Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross related to the 2020 census.

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The House Judiciary Committee authorized its chairman on Wednesday to use a subpoena to try to force the Justice Department to give Congress a full copy of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report and all of the underlying evidence used to reach his conclusions.

The chairman, Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, said he would not immediately issue the subpoena. But the party-line vote won by Democrats who control the committee ratchets up pressure on Attorney General William P. Barr as he decides how much of the nearly 400-page report to share with lawmakers.

“I will give him time to change his mind,” Mr. Nadler said in his opening statement. “But if we cannot reach an accommodation, then we will have no choice but to issue subpoenas for these materials.”

The committee also approved subpoenas for five former White House aides who Democrats said were relevant to an ongoing investigation into possible obstruction of justice, abuse of power and corruption within the Trump administration.

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From @Keaton_James

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@Pet_Proletariat Thanks for the cross-link. I should have posted this here in the first place! :blush:

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No worries, I got ya :wink:

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I love this thread. Is the main post being updated like a wiki?

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@Matt I opened it as a wiki, will update the main post when I have time. If anyone wants to help, have at it, just :heavy_check_mark: any posts you’ve logged in the emoji box.

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:boom::boom::boom:

The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, using a little-known provision in the federal tax code, formally requested on Wednesday that the I.R.S. hand over six years of President Trump’s personal and business tax returns, starting what is likely to be a momentous fight with his administration.

Representative Richard E. Neal, Democrat of Massachusetts, hand-delivered a two-page letter laying out the request to Charles P. Rettig, the Internal Revenue Service commissioner, ending months of speculation about when he would do so and almost certainly prompting a legal challenge from the Trump administration.

[ Read Mr. Neal’s letter to the I.R.S. commissioner .]

The move came as other panels controlled by House Democrats were flexing their muscles. The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning authorized its chairman to use a subpoena to try to force the Justice Department to give Congress a full copy of the special counsel’s report and all of the underlying evidence used to reach his conclusions on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

And the chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee said that he would soon ask for a vote on a subpoena of his own to compel Mazars USA, an accounting firm tied to the president, to produce a decade’s worth of Mr. Trump’s financial records.

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I can help…but I do not have a clue what you are talking about technically. You can PM me. :grin:

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But Democrats on Capitol Hill say that, beyond Newbold, there is a small army of whistle-blowers from across the government who have been working in secret with the House Oversight Committee to report on alleged malfeasance inside the Trump administration. Lawmakers and aides are reluctant to discuss information they have gleaned from anonymous government tipsters in detail. But the list of whistle-blowers who either currently or previously worked in the Trump administration, or who worked closely with the administration, numbers in the “dozens,” according to a senior aide from the committee now led by Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland.

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Rep. Jerry Nadler, the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr Thursday requesting the public release of summaries of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report prepared by his investigators, as well as all communications between the Justice Department and Mueller’s office about the document.

The big news here is that Nadler is demanding, not just the report, but also the communications between Mueller’s team and Barr prior to Barr releasing his whitewash “summary.” In other words, Nadler is virtually accusing Barr of a cover up.

Based on press reports, Nadler is alleging that Barr suppressed the summaries written by Mueller’s team which they intended to be released to the public. He further alleges that Barr then substituted his misleading “summary” in the form of his public letter. The first three paragraphs of Nadler’s letter are a scathing rebuke of Barr:

Dear Attorney General Barr,

I write to you regarding troubling press reports relating to your handling of Special Counsel Mueller’s report, and to urge that you immediately release to the public any “summaries” contained in the report that may have been prepared by the Special Counsel.

The New York Times and the Washington Post both report that some in the Special Counsel’s office have raised concerns about your March 24 letter summarizing the results of the Special Counsel’s investigation. The Post wrote that “members of [Special Counsel] Mueller’s team have complained to close associates that the evidence they gathered on obstruction was alarming and significant.”

These reports suggest that the Special Counsel prepared his own summaries, intended for public consumption, which you chose to withhold in favor of your own: “Some members of the office were particularly disappointed that Barr did not release summary information the special counsel team had … prepared for different sections of the report, with a view that they could [be] made public.” In fact, one unnamed U.S. official is quoted as saying that “Mueller’s team assumed the information was going to be made available to the public … 'and so they prepared their summaries to be shared in their own words-and not in the attorney general’s summary of their work, as turned out to be the case.”’

Here’s Nadler’s letter to Barr in full.

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Tonight Rachel Maddow listed all the current investigations into Trump’s Inaugural Committee. Wow! There are seven! Here they are (with links to articles about the investigations – albeit, there’s not much info for the Brooklyn probe):

Notes:

  1. The first two House investigations fit neatly in this thread – the five others don’t technically belong here, but I thought it would be impressive to list them all together in the spirit of Maddow’s report and this seemed like a good spot for that. As those five Federal and State investigations progress, I’m sure we’ll be posting about them in the daily threads.

  2. If you’re wondering why the U.S. Court in California has become involved, it’s probably due to the Elliott Broidy connection (just my guess). He was a Finance Vice-Chair on the Inaugural Committee and has an office in Los Angeles that was recently raided by the Feds (see the Los Angeles link above for more info).

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I’ve been down the inaugural rabbit hole a bit, there’s a lot there. Not surprised.

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So this one is from Buzzfeed News. Still seems fishy, and sketchy, but if true this would be the scenario Barr testified in congress that would be considered Obstruction of Justice.

https://youtu.be/yxKWPiIGToI

Read this with a grain of salt and remember that Cohen really doesn’t want to go to jail. Too tailor made to what information is already out there. I post this because you may see it on social media and I just wanted to provide a warning.

Attorneys for Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former fixer, submitted documents to lawmakers Thursday night accusing Trump and his team of lawyers of instructing Cohen to lie to Congress about when negotiations ended to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

In a 12-page memo sent to top House Democrats, Cohen’s attorneys said Trump “encouraged Cohen to lie and say all Moscow Tower project contacts ended as of January 31, 2016 using ‘code’ language — telling Cohen during various conversations that there was ‘no collusion, no Russian contacts, nothing about Russia’ after the start of the campaign.’”

[…]

The more than 100 pages of documents included with Cohen’s memo claim to lay bare a “conspiracy to collude” with the Russian government during the campaign, along with an array of other crimes by the president. The memo also for the “first time discloses Michael Cohen’s testimony to the Mueller team and to other non-public testimony to congressional committees,” according to Cohen’s legal team.

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Weird new fight within the House Judiciary Committee, Republicans are arguing that in order for the committee to see the unredacted Mueller report and the underlying evidence, the committee would first have to open an impeachment investigation.

:thinking: Looks like they’re trying to push Dems into making an impeachment play. I don’t think they can do that… Dems should keep making the legislative argument and open a 9/11 style Commission investigation into how to prevent future elections from being perverted. Then Dems can hold the Republicans publically accountable for not addressing this issue sooner.

Do Democrats have to begin the process of impeaching President Donald Trump in order to access special counsel Robert Mueller’s secrets?

That legal debate began raging inside the House Judiciary Committee on Friday after a new federal court ruling suggested that Congress’ access to some confidential evidence — like the kind obtained by Mueller — hinges on lawmakers launching a “judicial proceeding.”

Republicans on the committee say the only “judicial proceeding” Congress can lead is an impeachment inquiry – a claim they say is backed up by legal precedent and history. Democrats would have to launch one against Trump if they want Mueller’s grand jury evidence, Republicans say.

[…]

Judiciary Committee Democrats are also pushing back against the notion that impeachment would be a requirement to get Mueller’s grand jury evidence. Democrats say courts haven’t ruled out other avenues that would count as “judicial proceedings.”

“I can understand why Republicans would like to interpret this morning’s decision as cutting off all access by congress to these materials. There’s probably something very damaging to the president there,” said a Democratic Judiciary Committee counsel. “But no court, including the D.C. Circuit in this morning’s case has ever held that Congress must be in an impeachment proceeding in order to access grand jury materials.”

To bolster their case, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) has argued that Congress received access to grand jury material amassed by prosecutors in investigations of Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. Ken Starr, the independent counsel who investigated Clinton, turned over a mountain of grand jury material to Congress, Nadler noted earlier this week.

“As a legal matter, the Judiciary Committee has always had access to grand jury material involving questions of presidential misconduct, and I can’t imagine the courts ultimately deciding otherwise in this case,” said Julian Epstein, who was the committee’s chief counsel in 1998, when Democrats received Starr’s grand jury evidence. “This Republican gamesmanship of wanting an impeachment declaration is childish form over substance, and the courts will not likely bow to that kind of rhetorical legerdemain.”

The House Intelligence Committee may have a claim to the information as well, said Barb McQuade, a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, in a call with reporters. “One of the other exceptions to the grand jury secrecy rule is that an attorney for the government may disclose grand jury material to a federal official whose job includes foreign intelligence work,” she said.

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Three powerful House committee chairs asked Capital One for documents last month related to President Donald Trump’s business empire — and the financial giant said it was already preserving documents but needs a subpoena in order to comply, according to letters obtained by POLITICO.

The March 11 request from House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) comes amid intensifying congressional scrutiny of the president’s financial records and tax returns.

The lawmakers asked Capital One for all documents related to the president’s revocable trust, the Trump Organization and other subsidiaries of his financial empire. Notably, the Democrats asked for documents that might have been turned over to special counsel Robert Mueller.

In a March 21 response to the committee leaders, Capital One executive Brent M. Timberlake said the corporation is “preserving the documents and materials,” but could only turn over the information if the committees issue a subpoena.

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:face_with_raised_eyebrow:

California Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said Sunday he was planning to send eight criminal referrals to Attorney General William Barr as soon as this week.

Nunes, who investigated accusations of FBI and Department of Justice abuse while he was previously chairman of the intelligence panel, did not say who he would be referring in a Fox News interview on Sunday.

Appearing on Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Nunes said five of the referrals are related to lying to Congress, misleading Congress and leaking classified information.

The other referrals, Nunes said, are allegations of lying to the FISA court that approves foreign surveillance warrants, manipulating intelligence and what he described as a “global leak referral,” which Nunes said wasn’t tied to one individual.

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