I know right?! We’re all sitting here going OMG, look he staged the whole thing, meanwhile the press spins the story that it was Pelosi’s remarks that set him off. The White House went to the printers that morning and printed out a sign that was clearly designed by someone with some graphic design experience. It’s all such an obvious ploy but to what end? None of this charade makes any logical sense, it’s just what can we throw at the wall and get to stick. End of rant.
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#trumptantrum
House Speaker Weekly Briefing
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) held her weekly press conference.
Click link to watch the full video 
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Thanks. I check in a lot here, as I maintain my own threads on Twitter to keep track of several of the ongoing issues, and anything I find that isn’t here I try and share. And that day was… nuts.
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There’s so much to unpack here but basically the Justice Department is arguing that Congress has cannot use the courts to exercise their oversight of the Executive branch. The logical conclusion to the Justice Department’s argument is that they want to make Trump a king, with no checks or balances. 
Appearing before a federal judge in Washington, DC, Justice Department official James Burnham argued the US Constitution simply did not give one branch of government — in this case, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives — the tools to sue another branch.
The framers of the Constitution “would have been horrified by that prospect,” Burnham said, since it would put the courts above Congress and the executive branch.
It’s an argument that extends far beyond the fight over the border. The Justice Department argued in its brief that lawsuits by Congress to enforce subpoenas to the executive branch were also inconsistent with the Constitution — Burnham cited examples of presidents before the mid-20th century who refused to give information to Congress and weren’t taken to court. But both Republicans and Democrats have argued to the contrary when they’ve gone to court to enforce their subpoenas.
[…]
The Justice Department has argued in the past in favor of limiting the role of courts to decide interbranch disputes. But judges have historically found that there is at least some role for them to play in interpreting the law when these sorts of fights come up.
Douglas Letter, general counsel to the House of Representatives, argued there was clear precedent supporting the role of the courts in stepping in to resolve fights between the other two branches. He argued the Constitution did contemplate one branch suing another when it made clear that the executive branch couldn’t sue Congress over legislative decision-making.
“The Supreme Court is perfectly comfortable telling us, telling the two branches, here’s what the law means,” Letter said.
Letter argued the Founding Fathers would have applauded the House for stepping in to say that the president could not spend money that wasn’t appropriated by Congress, a key tenet of the Constitution. Perhaps with an eye to the inevitable appeals to come, he cited language written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, formerly a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, highlighting the importance of Congress’s appropriations power.
Responding to the Justice Department’s argument that Congress had other ways of opposing the executive branch without going to court — for instance, holding hearings or passing legislation explicitly preventing Trump from using funds for this purpose — Letter said Congress did what it was supposed to when it denied the bulk of Trump’s request for billions of dollars for border construction. Trump’s actions amounted to nullifying Congress’s vote, he argued, and members weren’t required to pass a measure saying, “No, we really meant it,” before they could go to court.
“It seems to me that here, we are dealing with something where Congress did act, and one the keys things to remember is the Supreme Court has said many times the executive can’t spend money on its own," Letter said.
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Mazar’s case appeal hearing July 12th. No stay so it’s uncertain if this will impact the collection of Documents by the House.
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I feel like this what we as a groups have been saying since the week the report dropped. I’m glad to see Dems back in an offensive position but we lost a whole month which is a long, long time in this new Trump based media/political environment. Anyone else feel frustrated?
Democrats admit it: They need to shift their post-Mueller strategy.
They’ve been so busy fighting technical battles over access to special counsel Robert Mueller’s report that they’ve barely had time to speak directly to Americans about its damning public findings of President Donald Trump’s conduct.
[…]
After returning from a weeklong Memorial Day recess, Democrats envision a wave of hearings on the substance of Mueller’s report.
The Intelligence Committee is exploring potential hearings on parts of Mueller’s report that chronicled a complex Russian plot to help elect Trump. The committee may soon revisit testimony from one Mueller witness — longtime Trump associate Felix Sater — who had been slated to appear in March. Sater was the chief negotiator of the Trump Tower Moscow project, which the committee is investigating.
The Judiciary Committee, meanwhile, anticipates a renewed focus on the dozen examples of potential obstruction of justice that Mueller described in his report. The committee has been consumed over the past two months with fights for access to Mueller’s key witnesses — like former White House counsel Don McGahn, whom the White House has instructed to defy the committee’s subpoena for his testimony and related documents — as well as Mueller himself.
[…]
That phase would involve hearings in June and July featuring former prosecutors who can walk Americans through the allegations of obstruction of justice, witness intimidation and the dangling of pardons. The committee may also focus on Trump’s business entanglements and whether he’s received any unauthorized payments from foreign governments — known as emoluments.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) said he anticipates calling a bipartisan panel of prosecutors who recently signed a letter arguing that Mueller’s evidence proves Trump obstructed justice — and that Trump would have been charged if he weren’t the president.
“At some point you’re going to see a panel of federal prosecutors come in about the letter that they signed,” said Lieu, also a Judiciary Committee member. “We’ll also hold hearings on witness intimidation. We’ll hold hearings on abuse of power. Just because Mueller doesn’t come in doesn’t mean we don’t continue with these.”
It’s all part of a strategy, Democrats say, to bring the allegations off the pages of the 448-page Mueller report — which they worry few Americans will actually read — and onto Americans’ television screens.
The shift in focus comes as Speaker Nancy Pelosi grapples with a growing chorus of Democrats — including many Judiciary Committee members — who are eager to see the House formally launch impeachment proceedings against the president, citing Trump’s resistance to their myriad investigations targeting his administration and his personal finances.
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House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler is pushing to empower committee chairs to hold individuals in contempt of Congress without going to the floor for a full House vote, a move that could expedite Democrats’ ability to punish anyone who defies their subpoenas but also risk further escalating tensions between congressional Democrats and the White House.
Nadler told his colleagues at a meeting Thursday that he’s looking at the change as a way to avoid clogging up the floor with contempt citations in the face of near all-out resistance to Democratic subpoenas, according to a source in the room.
The New York Democrat also wants to hold a floor vote on a contempt package the week of June 4, House Majority Whip James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat, told CNN on Thursday. That would include a vote to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt and possibly former White House counsel Don McGahn. Yet a number of Democrats are pushing to levy heavy fines on McGahn to warn future witnesses to comply with House subpoenas.
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President Donald Trump, his businesses and members of his family on Friday appealed a federal judge’s decision that Deutsche Bank and Capital One can turn over years of financial records relating to the president.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Court Edgardo Ramos said that the two banks can comply with the subpoenas issued by the Democrat-led House Intelligence and Financial Services Committees for a broad range of financial information. Trump and three of his children — Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump — had sued to block the subpoenas, arguing that they had no “legitimate legislative purpose” and that they were intended to dig up dirt to damage Trump politically.
A lawyer for Trump told Ramos in federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday that an appeal was “probably a safe bet.”
[…]
The move marks the second time Trump has sought to overturn a judge’s decision that would force the disclosure of his financial records. On Monday, a judge in Washington, D.C., federal court ruled that Mazars LLC, the president’s accounting firm, had to turn over such records in response to another subpoena from House Democrats. Trump appealed that ruling the following day.
In both cases, the judges rejected outright each of the arguments put forward to block the subpoenas from House Democrats. The judges outlined broad subpoena powers for Congress, set a low bar for Congress establishing a “legislative purpose” when issuing subpoenas, and dismissed the notion that the judiciary should be responsible for evaluating Congress’ political motives.
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Mueller is offering an opening statement before the public (on TV), private testimony but public written transcript of what was said. This would be a decent compromise if it weren’t for that fact that Congress is entitled to everything.
What I don’t understand is Mueller’s unwillingness to come forward and tell the American People what he found?! This, tough-shit-just-read-my-report bullshit is not informing anyone and is raising more questions than it’s answering. What the fuck are we doing as a country on this issue?! Why is it so hard to just get to the truth?
KEY POINTS
- Special counsel Robert Mueller wants to talk to Congress about his investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election, but he wants to do it behind closed doors, says Rep. Jerrold Nadler,
- Nadler tells MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that Mueller told the committee he would make his opening statement before the public.
- A transcript of Mueller’s testimony would be made public, Nadler adds.
- Nadler says he does not know why Mueller has been pushing for private testimony, but speculated that the Republican former FBI director “doesn’t want to participate in anything that he might regard as a political spectacle.”
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I hope he’s going to be okay. 
Representative Jerrold Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, was taken to a hospital after apparently fainting during a news conference on Friday in Manhattan.
Mr. Nadler, 71, was seated at a table in a gymnasium at Public School 199 on the Upper West Side, where Mayor Bill de Blasio was heralding the expansion of New York City’s speed camera program.
Thirty minutes after Mr. Nadler, a Democrat, made brief remarks, his head appeared to slump. Three medical professionals attended to Mr. Nadler, and Mr. de Blasio helped Mr. Nadler to drink some Gatorade from the mayor’s metal water bottle. A fan was turned on, and the gymnasium was cleared.
Nadler tweets, he’s going to be okay.
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I get why he does not want to be lobbed horrid questions around Lisa Page/Peter Stzrok and belittled by the R’s questions. Nadler put it succinctly - saying there’s a certain ‘rectitude’ that he has for the law, his role as former FBI head and does not want to get in a food fight with any one.
I would hope that he would make abundantly clear in his open statement what he means about how is T not exonerated.
I agree with you…I really want him to be forthright and come forward.
It is possible they could get Andrew Weissmann or some other Mueller team person to testify too.
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Absolutely. I am beyond exasperated. If he didn’t have the nerve to testify in public about his findings, he shouldn’t have taken the job in the first place.
Mueller: Unless you’re still working on uncovering a smoking gun, leave the DoJ and testify openly and truthfully to the American people. Now.
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Lawyers for President Donald Trump have reached an agreement with the House Intelligence and Financial Services committees to hold off for now on enforcing the subpoenas for Trump’s financial records from Deutsche Bank and Capital One, according to a court document and a source familiar with the agreement.
Similar to a deal reached earlier this week with the House Oversight committee, the agreement allows for an expedited appeal schedule.
I guess this is a good thing since the agreement is supposed to speed up the appeals schedule. But what does that mean? How long is an “expedited appeals schedule”? If it’s six months, I say tear up the agreement and enforce the subpoena already.
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The length and scope of this list of investigations into Trump’s nefarious deeds is staggering. There’s no way to summarize it – you simply must see the list in its entirety. You’ll just keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. It’s truly overwhelming – like a plague of locusts has descended upon us.
Link courtesy of currentstatus.io
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There’s a lot of overlap too. Do committees do joint sessions for these?
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Good find. Why aren’t there more stories that take a broader view like this one?
I think I’ll add some of those points in the description portion of the header for each Committee, just makes the whole situation even more ridiculous. 
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Yes and yes. A good example is the Mueller Report which is being pursued through both the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees. I’ve been double posting in the header when it’s a joint effort or joint hearing.
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Republicans in the Senate would quash Impeachment proceedings almost immediately.
GOP senators say that if the House passes articles of impeachment against President Trump they will quickly quash them in the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has broad authority to set the parameters of a trial.
While McConnell is required to act on articles of impeachment, which require 67 votes — or a two-thirds majority — to convict the president, he and his Republican colleagues have the power to set the rules and ensure the briefest of trials.
“I think it would be disposed of very quickly,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham(R-S.C.).
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