Blake Anderson, lawyer
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House committee chair calls for investigation into $400 million border wall contract
The chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security on Wednesday called for an investigation into a $400 million border wall contract awarded this week to North Dakota-based Fisher Sand and Gravel, a company President Trump personally urged military officials to hire.
In a letter to the Defense Department Office of Inspector General, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said there are reasons to be suspicious of the decision to bestow such a large contract on the company. Thompson cited Trump’s repeated promotion of Fisher to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and a recent visit by the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to a span of privately financed barrier the firm built outside El Paso.
“These actions raise concerns about the possibility of inappropriate influence on USACE’s contracting decision,” Thompson wrote. “Therefore, I am requesting that you review the award of this contract to ensure that the bid submitted by Fisher Sand and Gravel Co. met the solicitation standards and that USACE made the award in accordance with federal procurement law and regulations.”
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GOP embraces a debunked Ukraine conspiracy to defend Trump from impeachment
Much of the Republican Party is pressing ahead with debunked claims about Ukraine as they defend President Trump from possible impeachment, embracing Russian-fueled conspiracy theories that seek to cast blame on Kyiv rather than Moscow for interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
The increasingly aggressive GOP efforts continued Tuesday on Capitol Hill and were amplified throughout conservative media, one day after House Republicans released a 123-page document that insisted that Trump’s handling of Ukraine was founded on “genuine and reasonable” suspicions — despite mounting evidence rejecting that assertion and warning of its consequences.
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‘Are you ready?’: Pelosi makes clear to Democrats that impeachment is coming
According to multiple Democratic lawmakers who attended a closed-door Capitol meeting, Pelosi announced no firm decision or timeline in moving toward a vote on Trump’s impeachment. But, a day after Schiff delivered a 300-page report detailing charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress against Trump, she made clear what lies ahead in the House.
“Are you ready?” Pelosi (D-Calif.) asked her colleagues, after describing grave constitutional circumstances posed by Trump’s alleged wrongdoing surrounding his dealings with Ukraine and his subsequent decision to stonewall the House investigation into it.
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Trump Blocked Key Impeachment Witnesses. Should Congress Wait?
Democrats have conceded that they would like to obtain more documents and hear more testimony from Mr. Trump’s key aides, but they have also argued that the evidence they have is sufficient to impeach him — and said it is absurd for the White House to contend their case has holes when it is thwarting their access to more information.
When a president systematically blockades congressional subpoenas and instructs current and former aides not to providedocuments and testimony, that is another basis to impeach, argued another witness, Michael J. Gerhardt, a University of North Carolina law professor and author of “The Federal Impeachment Process: A Constitutional and Historical Analysis.”
“In this situation, the full-scale obstruction of those subpoenas, I think, torpedoes separation of powers and, therefore, your only recourse is to, in a sense, protect your institutional prerogatives, and that would include impeachment,” Mr. Gerhardt testified.
Notably, Mr. Turley did not assert the president did nothing wrong, as hard-core supporters of Mr. Trump have done. He said that a now famous call in which Mr. Trump pressured Ukraine’s president to announce investigations that could benefit him politically “was anything but perfect,” and that Congress had a legitimate reason to scrutinize it.
But, he argued, it is premature to rush forward with impeachment while Congress has yet to obtain potentially knowable facts about what Mr. Trump said to his aides about withholding a White House meeting and $391 million in military aid that Ukraine desperately needed to shore up its defenses against Russian aggression.
Much of the evidence the House uncovered in its inquiry was from witnesses who largely were a degree of separation removed from Mr. Trump himself. As a result, they were unable to say whether the president ever directly and explicitly said he was conditioning a meeting and the securing of funding for the specific purpose of coercing Ukraine’s president into announcing investigations that would benefit him politically.
In his longer written statement, Mr. Turley named three men who interacted directly with the president and might know more about what Mr. Trump said behind closed doors about Ukraine: Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, John R. Bolton; his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani; and his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney.
Mr. Bolton is known to have opposed what Mr. Giuliani was doing for Mr. Trump with Ukraine, met directly with Mr. Trump to discuss the frozen aid to Ukraine in August and has coyly indicated that he knows something important that Congress does not yet know.
“There remain core witnesses and documents that have not been sought through the courts,” Mr. Turley wrote, adding that the House “is moving forward based on conjecture, assuming what the evidence would show if there existed the time or inclination to establish it.”
But Mr. Turley made only a passing reference in his written statement to the problem that has bedeviled impeachment investigators: The White House has directed top aides to Mr. Trump not to cooperate with the House, while asserting that they are immune from being subpoenaed to testify about their discussions with the president.
Power of Impeachment - Article I Section 2 Clause 5
“5: The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.”
I don’t know what constitution he’s reading but it plainly says it’s up to the House of Representatives to impeach. Not ask for a ruling from the judicial branch over subpoenas. This fellow seems confused. What do y’all think? 
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Cross posting 
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Documents from today’s hearing
Witnesses
Professor Noah Feldman
Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law and Director, Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law, Harvard Law School
Professor Michael Gerhardt
Burton Craige Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence, The University of North Carolina School of Law
Professor Pamela S. Karlan
Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law and Co-Director, Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, Stanford Law School
Professor Jonathan Turley
J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law, George Washington University Law School
Documents
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LISTEN: The Daily explains the difference between the public hearing proceedings in the Judiciary Committee vs what we saw in the Intel Committee hearings.
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Not sure about this. Someone may have more info to verify the accuracy of this report. If true, a sad and very significant development.
Sorry! seems to be a bullSh*t story from a fake site - the photo is apparently of a woman professor teaching in Canada. Please disregard.
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Thanks for looking into this; I am using what you’ve found here to warn others of the disinformation attempt, as that site will inevitably come up.
UPDATE:
This could well explain why they used a Canadian professor’s picture for their fake diplomat.
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Matt Gaetz Makes A Fool Of Himself At Trump Impeachment Hearing
Faux News is using the “my dog ate my homework” defense to suggest somebody ELSE used Devin Nunes’ phone for multiple long conversations with Giuliani associate Lev Parnas.
Seriously.
Law Professor Gives Damning Testimony On Trump Soliciting Foreign Election Interference
Stanford professor Pamela S. Karlan used a domestic analogy to put Trump’s withholding of aid to Ukraine in context.
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::sighs::
And here is the part where the man being tried just dictated how his own trial will be run.
In any other trial this would be witness tampering, jury fixing, and bribing the judge all at once.
He also just contradicted ALL of his party’s complaints about the impeachment process being too fast. Let’s see them how long it takes them to do yet another Trump tweet 180.
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The Impeachment Inquiry into President Donald J. Trump: Presentations from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and House Judiciary Committee
Date:
Monday, December 9, 2019 - 9:00am
Location:
1100 Longworth House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515
The Impeachment Inquiry into President Donald J. Trump: Presentations from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and House Judiciary Committee
Subcommittees:
The next hearing has been scheduled for Monday. FYI, Dec. 20th is the last day of this Congress. The next Congress won’t return until January 7th, 2020.
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12/05/19 Speaker Pelosi Statement on Impeachment Inquiry
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called for the House to move forward with articles of impeachment against President Trump. In a statement, the speaker argued that the facts against the president are “uncontested” and said he had abused his power and put at risk national security.
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The Legal Debate About Impeachment Is Over
But the Republicans’ legal expert brought a surprise, if one that received too little attention. Jonathan Turley submitted an extensive written statement, in which he disagreed with his fellow witnesses in myriad respects. But as he delivered his opening oral remarks, he cut to the heart of the matter: “The use of military aid for a quid pro quo to investigate one’s political opponent, if proven, can be an impeachable offense.”
It was easy to miss this line, especially as Turley quickly returned to railing against what he consistently characterized as an impeachment process moving too hastily. But this was it—the whole ball game.
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Democrats familiar with the matter believe the Judiciary panel is on track to begin publicly debating and voting on articles by the end of next week, despite uniform Republican opposition, laying the groundwork for a possible vote to impeach the president by Dec. 20, the final day Congress is scheduled to be in session this year.
And then Congress returns on January 7th of 2020…
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She is standing firm…she’s doing it.
Here’s the visual…
Watch 
And better view…
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Any word on who the House Democrats will appoint as Impeachment Managers? That’s who is tasked with brining the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate for the trial. They make the case against the President like a prosecutor. This is all so rare to see first hand
@dragonfly9 thanks again for posting this Lawfare piece. I had been reading those Senate rules and Procedures to explain all this but this is much better.
We are almost to this part of Impeachment,
They will enter the Senate chamber under a series of theatrical stage directions, which are laid out in a document entitled, “Rules of Procedure and Practice in the Senate when Sitting on Impeachment Trials.” The Senate’s impeachment rules are weirdly detailed, specifying speeches and oaths that different actors must recite and the specific times of day when things must happen. Yet they offer no rules of evidence or standards of proof and allow majority votes in the Senate to decide key questions that in any normal trial proceeding would be decided by judges under law.
Following these rules, the managers—led, say, by Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff—will have alerted the Senate that they’re ready to present the articles, and Julie Adams, the secretary of the Senate, will have responded that the Senate will receive them. Schiff and the others will approach the Senate bar. The Senate’s sergeant at arms, Michael C. Stenger, will proclaim: “All persons are commanded to keep silence, on pain of imprisonment, while the House of Representatives is exhibiting to the Senate of the United States articles of impeachment against Donald Trump.” Following Stenger’s proclamation, the House managers will exhibit the articles, displaying their allegations against the president.
A few blocks away, Chief Justice John Roberts will have already received a request from the Senate—the first time in more than 20 years a chief justice will have received such a summons: He must arrive at the Capitol building the next day at 1:00 p.m. to preside over the consideration of the impeachment articles. The chief justice will return to the Senate daily—except on Sundays—while the articles are being considered and throughout Trump’s trial. No one is certain how long that may take.
The following day, the chief justice will arrive at the Capitol and take an oath administered by, in all likelihood, the president pro tempore of the Senate, Chuck Grassley. Roberts will then administer a special oath required by Article I of the Constitution to the senators present: ‘‘I solemnly swear … that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald J. Trump, now pending, I will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws: So help me God.’’
Meanwhile, a writ of summons will be delivered to President Trump. The writ will recite the impeachment articles and call on Trump to appear before the Senate, to file his answer to the articles, and to abide by the orders and judgments of the Senate in its consideration of them. Trump’s derisive tweets about the Senate process will give rise to the widespread inference that he has, in fact, received the Senate’s writ.
I just want to point out that a person sent by the Senate reads the Articles of Impeachment to the President’s face, not in a letter or court documents but straightforward all the misconduct he stands accused of, hopefully with some awkward eye contact and foot shuffling included.
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