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The Impeachment of President Donald J. Trump

The House Intelligence Committee is assisting the House Judiciary Committee in obtaining intelligence materials related to the Judiciary Committee’s impeachment investigation into the President. According to committee rules, the House Intelligence Committee have the ability to de-classify materials and documents, which was successfully tested by Rep. Devin Nunes last year. Lawmakers are hoping the Intel committee’s involvement could temper the courts concerns about grand-jury information being exposed because of their unique ability to handle classified information.

Sources involved in the process say Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) signed off on the panel’s legal strategy and suggested approaches that would closely bind the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees together as the process unfolds. Allegations that Trump welcomed Russian interference in the 2016 election while pursuing a business deal in Moscow have taken center stage for Schiff’s panel.

“In a case as unique as Trump, it is important to consider the totality of the evidence, including classified information,” said a source close to Schiff. “We’ve been working closely with the Judiciary Committee throughout this process and will continue to provide support as needed.”

[…]

Traditionally, an impeachment process has involved the public airing of allegations and evidence against a sitting president. But counterintelligence information, by its nature, is classified and cannot be publicly released or discussed — presenting lawmakers with a new challenge when making the public case for Trump’s ouster.

“The Constitution doesn’t contemplate the notion of having a classified portion of an impeachment process, and it would be political malpractice to try to pursue such a drastic remedy without fully informing the public of the complete factual record,” said Bradley Moss, a prominent national security attorney. “If articles of impeachment are pursued, the House will have to rely upon unclassified information or, as a last resort, use its own Article I authority to disclose otherwise classified information.”

Others noted that the House would have to weigh taking the extraordinary step of revealing classified information if it felt that information contained in secret files were crucial to prove their case.

[…]

The committee has the option to disclose classified information, but it has only been used once in its history: under Nunes’ leadership, when his staff drafted a memo intended to cast doubt on the origins of the investigation of Russia’s links to the Trump campaign. The process, laid out in the House rules, allows lawmakers to reveal classified information if the full House deems it in the public interest, even over the objection of the president. But in Nunes’ case, Trump, over public protests of the FBI, ultimately opted to declassify the material.

Similarly, grand-jury evidence is sensitive and kept secret by law, with few exceptions. The Intelligence Committee is well suited to handle such materials, and its involvement could alleviate concerns about grand-jury information being leaked.

“The Intelligence Committee’s ability to handle high levels of classification — that’s what they’re designed to do. And because of that, what they can do is they can sign in and sign out anyone who needs to review it. They can create a record of who looks at the material,” said Mieke Eoyang, a former subcommittee staff director for the panel, adding: “We don’t people who have a history of dealing with this at a presidential level.”

One former Judiciary Committee official said the Intelligence Committee’s involvement could assuage a court’s concern about how grand jury information would be handled.

"It’s possible, but unproven, that this collaboration may give the legal arguments more jet fuel in the courts for grand jury document access," said Julian Epstein, who was on the Democratic staff of the Judiciary Committee during the Clinton impeachment process.

The Intelligence Committee, which was created as an outgrowth of the Watergate era to police the intelligence community, was never intended as a vehicle for impeachment. The process of drafting articles of impeachment is well outside the panel’s traditional jurisdiction. But in this unique case, Schiff’s committee would review the sensitive grand-jury information related to volume one of Mueller’s report, which details Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

In addition, the panel could provide Nadler’s staff with documents and testimony gleaned as part of its own probes and its general oversight of the intelligence community. The Intelligence Committee — first under Republican leadership in 2017 and then Democratic leadership this year — conducted dozens of interviews with witnesses connected to the Mueller investigation.

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The House Judiciary Committee will officially return a few days early from its summer break to work on gun control legislation, following mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.*

The committee says that members will return for a Sept. 4 meeting to mark up three new pieces of legislation, including a bill that would ban high-capacity ammunition magazines, a bill prohibiting people convicted of misdemeanor hate crimes from purchasing a gun, and the House version of Sen. Lindsey Graham’s proposal to give grants to states that enact so-called red flag laws that allow police to seize guns from people deemed a danger to themselves or others.

[…]

The House of Representatives has already passed two bills to strengthen background checks for gun sales — one that would expand background checks for nearly all gun sales and another that would close the “Charleston loophole,” which allows a gun sale to automatically go through if a background check is not completed within three days.

"There is more that we can and must do to address the gun violence epidemic. We will not sit idly by," said Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler in a statement. "I call on my Senate colleagues to join us in this effort by swiftly passing gun safety bills the House has already passed and also by acting on the additional bills we will be considering."

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:-1: :zipper_mouth_face:

The Trump administration’s Justice Department has again taken President Donald Trump’s side in a fight between him – as a private citizen – and the US House of Representatives over subpoenas for his personal financial records.

The Justice Department argues the two banks shouldn’t have to hand over the subpoenaed information and accuses lawmakers of not taking the correct steps to seek the documents.

This is the first time the Justice Department has spoken up in this subpoena fight. Its foray into the case comes as House Democrats’ attempts heat up to get Trump’s financial records and to consider formal impeachment proceedings of the President.

On Friday, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to consider whether two banks, Deutsche Bank and Capital One, will have to turn over Trump’s information to House committees. Judge Jon Newman, a Jimmy Carter appointee, and Judges Debra Ann Livingston and Peter Hall, both appointed by President George W. Bush, will hear the arguments.

In its legal brief Monday, the Justice Department broadly criticizes how the House authorized the subpoenas before taking a full House vote. They also allege that House Democrats are unfairly targeting the President.

Friday will be a pivotal day in the House investigations of Trump – the judges will either side with Trump’s DoJ (and reject the subpoenas for Trump’s financial records) or they will side with the People’s House (and enforce the subpoenas). Stay tuned… :hourglass_flowing_sand:

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Luján is the 4th ranking Democrat in the House! And now he’s also the 127th to support an impeachment inquiry.

The push to remove the president from office gained momentum on Monday after the No. 4 House Democrat announced support for an impeachment investigation into Donald Trump.

Ben Ray Luján, a close ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is the highest-ranking House Democrat to back impeachment thus far. The New Mexico Democrat, who currently serves as assistant speaker, is running to fill an open Senate seat in his home state next year.

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An awesome “Impeachment Inquiry Scoreboard” from Politico:

This comprehensive list makes it easy to find where your representative stands. If they’re not on board yet, you can give them a nudge via phone or email.

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Cross-posting for @Keaton_James

Very insightful analysis of these actions taken by them to leverage what a whistleblower has said and create a larger argument that perhaps the presidential auditing process has been messed with, thereby making it necessary to turn over the paperwork to the House Ways and Means Committee head - Neal.

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And this puts a big STOP on the Investigations into Trump’s businesses, but was a ruling like this one was expected by Judge Sullivan.

One effect of Sullivan’s ruling will be to keep on hold the “discovery” process, a pretrial fact-finding period in which the Democrats wanted to serve 37 subpoenason Trump businesses, asking about their foreign customers.

Sullivan had paused that process in July, after the appeals court’s ruling.

Earlier, attorneys working with the Democrats said that subpoenas delayed would, in effect, be subpoenas denied — that Trump’s first term might run out before the plaintiffs could get any answers. They also questioned Trump’s lawyers’ argument that the suit was a distraction.

There is simply no reason — and the President has offered none — why discovery against businesses that he plays no role in running should ‘distract [him] from the performance of his constitutional duties,’ ” the lawyers wrote in recent court filings, trying to persuade Sullivan to let discovery continue.

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Here’s the meat of Nadler’s reasoning for the document requests.

Nadler’s request comes one day after Trump’s attorneys argued that two of the committees — Intelligence and Financial Services — may not invoke the possibility of impeachment in order to gain access to Trump’s personal financial information held by Deutsche Bank and Capital One. Trump’s lawyers called impeachment “a non-legislative power that the Committees do not and cannot invoke here (because, among other reasons, they have no jurisdiction over it under the House Rules).”

The Judiciary Committee’s move request appears to directly answer that claim: All documents gathered by other committees investigating Trump might become relevant to its impeachment probe. That also bolsters House General Counsel Douglas Letter’s effort to link the Intelligence and Financial Services Committees’ demands to the ongoing impeachment inquiry.

“In fact, the House Committee on the Judiciary is investigating whether to recommend articles of impeachment against President Trump,” Letter wrote. He issued a similar filing in a separate lawsuit on behalf of the Oversight Committee, which is seeking Trump’s financial records through his accounting firm, Mazars.

The president’s attorneys say those panels have no right to obtain Trump’s financial documents because only the Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction over impeachment. Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, too, argue that the panel hasn’t formally invoked impeachment since there hasn’t been an official vote of the committee or the House, a precedent that has been adhered to in all prior presidential impeachment probes.

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Cross-posting

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@dragonfly9 “Meanwhile these two banks Deutsch and Capital One are refusing to verify if they do have T’s tax returns…this has been a highly anticipated hearing. We need to wait another 48 hrs.”

Yes, so frustrating. And it sounds like the panel of judges is also very frustrated. From their remarks in court (see below), you might suppose they will rule in support of the subpoenas, but we’ve been burned before, so I’m still holding my breath until we get an actual ruling. – Let’s hope that will be on Monday. Even with a favorable ruling, if the banks decide not to cooperate, it sounds like they could drag this out even further. Arrrrgh.

Here’s an NYP article that goes into more depth about the contentious back-and-forth between the judges and the bank’s lawyers. Note that the DoJ lawyer is asking the judges not to release Trump’s financial information – surprise, surprise.

A lawyer for Deutsche Bank is refusing to say whether or not his institution has President Trump’s tax returns — despite repeated questioning by the three-judge panel — as Trump continues his fight to quash congressional subpoenas seeking 10 years of financial records for him and his family.

“Does the bank have the tax returns?” United States Circuit Judge Jon Newman, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, asked Deutsche Bank lawyer Raphael Prober Friday.

“That unfortunately is not a question we’re able to address,” Prober responded, kicking off a back and forth in which the three-judge panel repeatedly asked him to answer the question, and he repeatedly declined. Capital One lawyer James Murphy also refused to answer the question.

An exasperated judge Peter Hall finally asked, sarcastically: “If we want an answer to that question, do we have to go to a court and seek an order?”

“If you do them, we have to worry about them,” Hall said.

The panel finally decided they would give the lawyers 48 hours to file a letter under seal stating whether or not they were in possession of the long-sought documents — though both Prober and Murphy remained unclear on whether they would actually answer the question in their submission.

The sparring followed morning arguments between a Justice Department lawyer and the general counsel to the United States House of Representatives, as Trump continues his attempts to keep Deutsche Bank and Capital One from releasing personal financial records belonging to him, his businesses, and his family.

DOJ attorney Patrick Strawbridge argued that Congress had overstepped their boundaries and moved into law enforcement territory, calling this “the broadest possible subpoena ever served that targets a sitting president.

“The real object does appear to be law enforcement,” Strawbridge told the three-judge panel. “I do not think they have the legitimate legislative purpose that validate these subpoenas.”

He went on to say that legislators didn’t need 10 years of records in order to see “every diet coke that a teenager bought using a credit card from Capitol One.”

Meanwhile, general counsel Douglas Letter said that Congress needed that many records to determine “how the money is flowing and why the money is flowing.”

“We’re trying to figure out if Mr. Trump is under the influence of the Saudis or the Russians,” Letter said.

The panel declined to immediately rule.

Friday’s arguments stemmed from Trump’s appeal of a lower court’s decision that would allow Deutsche bank and Capital One to turn over 10 years of financial documents related to Trump, his three eldest children, and two of his businesses.

Trump personally sued the banks to keep the information secret, after they were served Congressional subpoenas demanding the documents.

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Porter is mentioned several times in the Mueller report because he witnessed many episodes in which Trump tried to constrain the investigation. The report cites Porter’s contemporaneous notes to bolster claims about the president’s actions, painting a portrait of a White House in chaos after Mueller was first appointed as special counsel.

At one point, according to the report, Trump instructed Porter to inquire with a top Justice Department official at the time, Rachel Brand, about taking over supervision duties of the Mueller probe. Trump was particularly incensed that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recused himself from overseeing the investigation, and Mueller’s report chronicles Trump’s attempts to fire or otherwise interfere with the probe.

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From NYT writer who broke the T finances piece on his 400 mil extra dollars from father’s estate…

Ok good news!:boom:

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If it is walks like a duck…

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And :boom:

If true…

O’Donnell (msnbc - The Last Word) is saying the co-signers on T’s Deutsch Bank’s loans (from a single source close to Deutsch Bank) are…Russian Oligarchs.

:boom::boom:

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Ironic timing…

What does Trump see in Putin anyway?

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@dragonfly9
Has any other news outlet confirmed this MSNBC story?

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I’ve been keeping an eye on this and thus far it seems to be a single source yet; it may not get verified for some time, so I’ve been careful about my “ifs” and “could means”.

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Cross-posting

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Trump is threatening to sue. which could be a very dumb move, especially since O’Donnell was VERY careful with his wording, noting he only had a single source and IF true. The discovery process would be… fascinating.

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Sorry to not respond sooner…no @Pet_Proletariat not of last night. It was Lawrence O’Donnell probably speaking to one of the lawyers? or someone associated with the judge possibly

I did hear some potential ‘what if’s’ from former Senator Claire McCaskill (on Morning Joe) who also a Former Proscecutor - if these were allegations were true, it is possible for the Judge to look them over “in camera” she described (in court’s chambers?) and he would verify that indeed they were signed by foreign subjects, and deem them very much in the public’s/Committee’s purview to review.

This is all conjecture…but if all the things we had heard re: Deutsche (corrupt bank/funding/launderer for Russians) and for T - he used the Russians to help finance his Golf courses, and Eric T did say it was the Russians…it could well be true.

Again…a conjecture and potential game-changer.

In camera - in private

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