IMO, Trump’s main reason for not participating: Now he can stand on the sidelines and whine and moan and throw tantrums about how “unfair” the hearings are. 
He’s trying to delegitimize the whole process – that’s the last refuge of the guilty – case in point: the Nuremberg trials.
The unanswered questions about T’s involvement, financially or otherwise with Putin/Russia still remains somewhat unknown, since the Administration is aggressively protecting this information, as well as T’s taxes. Obviously, the clear act of withholding is a tacit reason to believe that there are nefarious ties that are very dear to T.
By extension, lack of clarity on what is really going on between the two parties does affect our national security with T fawning all over Putin and giving away the store potentially, giving a green light to Turkey to go after the Kurds, and open the door to Russia, the dismantling of our FEC or Federal Election Committees, Cyber Security, State Dept and so much more. What has been galling is the fact the details of private meetings between the two leaders have been kept private…
Read more of what the recap of what is known and unknown about T’s catering to Russia and vice versa.
What is at stake? Just about everything.
Compounding Americans’ opaque view into Mr Trump’s finances is the fact that he is the only American president since Richard Nixon to not release his income tax returns.
According to Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor and a distinguished fellow in criminal justice at Pace University law school, investigators’ lack of access to Mr Trump’s financial records means the motives for some of his decisions and policy stances remain unexplored.
“This goes back to…questions of what is motivating all of this,” Ms Rocah told The Independent.
“We know part of it is helping his campaign – which is a crime in and of itself – but all roads also lead to money with Donald Trump, and until we know what his financial entanglements really are we are not going to understand what is really going on here.”
Ms Rocah also said the Trump administration’s refusal to turn the evidence Mr Mueller gathered over to congressional investigators means that the question of whether people in Mr Trump’s orbit coordinated their campaign’s messaging with WikILeaks’ release of emails that Russian military hackers stole from the Democratic National Committee will continue to go unanswered without further investigation.
“There’s still all this stuff that’s sealed, and while I think we’re starting to learn some of these things through FOIA requests, Congress really hasn’t been able to get their hands on any of it because they’re playing the delay game with these court battles over it,” she said.
“We know that he was essentially coordinating the campaign with WikILeaks, and we only learned that in the past couple of weeks, so what else don’t we know that we could discover if Congress had access to it,” she continued.
“We all kind of know it without knowing it - the answer to what is motivating the Helsinki press conference, the favouritism to Putin, and his helping Russia over Ukraine, but what is motivating all of that? Does he just love dictators or is because of some financial interest, or both? We want the facts, and because they’re obstructing…and delaying…by the time it comes out it will be too late.”
Joel Rubin, who served as deputy assistant secretary for house affairs from 2014-2015, concurred with Ms Rocah’s view that there are too many unanswered questions about the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
“Of course, there’s the primary question about all the primary engagements between the Trump campaign and the Russian operation that were extensively documented in the Mueller report – about 100 of them – and no real explanation…that makes any sense,” Mr Rubin said.
“It’s a clear precursor in terms of their sense of what they can get away with on working with foreigners and foreign governments to help them win elections,” he continued, noting that Congress has not explored why Jared Kushner – Mr Trump’s son-in-law and a key advisor during his 2016 campaign – wanted to set up a secret back-channel with the Russian embassy.
This is (potentially) damning to Pence who now wants to classify anything having to do with the contents of a ‘call’ that Jennifer Williams testified to, and wrote her comments to the Impeachment Committee because she was told it was classified. But she also states that the call was more ‘political’ in nature…hmmmmm
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) sent a letter to Vice President Pence on Friday requesting that he declassify more material from one of his aides’ testimony in the House impeachment investigation.
The request centered around the testimony of Jennifer Williams, a career foreign service officer and staffer to Pence, who testified that a conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “unusual, and more of a political nature.”
“Today, the House Intelligence Committee sent the following letter to Vice President Mike Pence requesting that the Office of the Vice President, or another relevant classification authority, declassify supplemental testimony provided by Jennifer Williams to the Committee, as noted in our report,” an intelligence panel aide told The Hill.
“While Ms. Williams already testified generally to the phone call in question, declassification of this supplemental testimony will allow the Congress to see further corroborative evidence as it considers articles of impeachment, and provide the public further understanding of the events in question," the official added.
Schiff wrote in the letter that he was requesting that Pence declassify the contents of a Sept. 18 call he had with Zelensky. Williams had initially testified about the call but said at a subsequent hearing that details of the conversation had been classified.
Williams’s attorney wrote to the Intelligence panel that she had “reviewed certain materials that caused her [to] recall additional information” about the call in preparation for her first hearing that she wished to “disclose to the Committee,” but Pence’s office informed her that the new information she remembered was classified. She later provided a classified supplemental written submission regarding information she had on the call.
Schiff in his letter seized on the fact that the vice president said last month he has “no objection at all” to the release of information about his call with Zelensky.
“Your willingness to release the transcript of your calls with President Zelensky necessarily means that you do not believe there is anything contained therein that would cause any harm to U.S. national security if publicly disclosed,” Schiff wrote.
Pence’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.
The conversation between Pence and Zelensky took place after Schiff revealed that a whistleblower had filed a complaint about a July 25 conversation between Trump and the Ukrainian president about which Williams later expressed concerns.
The call is at the center of the impeachment proceedings in the House against Trump, with Democrats saying they could introduce articles against the president as soon as next week.
I love a good behind the scenes read. Question, can we send them better food?
But food has been arriving like a perpetual potluck: Brownies, cookies, Indian curries, pies, endless coffee. A leftover Thanksgiving turkey sits in a Judiciary Committee fridge, a relic of a holiday spent typing. Like so much impeachment planning, you take what comes, expect the unexpected and, in many cases, the very much expected.
“It tends to be pizza,” Mr. Swalwell said of the go-to sustenance in the run-up to the hearing. But you never know, hope springs eternal for a bit of variety, maybe something different before Monday.
“I’m just looking for a break,” Mr. Swalwell said, “from pizza.”
A national security aide to Vice President Mike Pence submitted additional classified evidence to House impeachment investigators about a phone call between Pence and Ukraine’s president, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff revealed Friday.
In a letter to Pence, Schiff (D-Calif.) asked the vice president to declassify supplemental testimony from the aide, Jennifer Williams, about Pence’s Sept. 18 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, arguing that there is no “legitimate basis” to keep it secret.
“The Office of the Vice President’s decision to classify ‘certain portions’ of the Sept. 18 call … cannot be justified on national security or any other legitimate grounds we can discern,” Schiff wrote to Pence, requesting a response by Dec. 11.
Schiff indicated that Williams recalled the relevant information about Pence’s phone call after her closed-door deposition on Nov. 7 and wished to convey it to impeachment investigators. The letter indicates Williams submitted the supplemental filing on Nov. 26, a week after she testified publicly.
“Having reviewed the supplemental submission, the committee strongly believes that there is no legitimate basis for the Office of the Vice President to assert that the information … is classified,” Schiff added in his letter to Pence, whose office has refused to turn over a slew of documents that investigators requested in October.
Went looking for the Friday letter and found this amazing cache of letters a documents! I wish every committee was this organized online.
If anyone finds a link to Schiff’s Friday letter to the VP, please post it here.
This is what taking the high road looks like.
Schiff’s Letter to VP 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aC5jqUI_BM5_gNye0ROfE262BXvD1dsF/view
Found it in this TalkingPointsMemo article.
cross posting for you @dragonfly9
This was expected from RBG
Justice Ginsburg temporarily halts Trump financial records subpoena
The stay is ordered until 5 p.m. on Dec. 13.
The stay is ordered until 5 p.m. on Dec. 13, and the court ordered that a response must be filed on or before Dec. 11 by 11 a.m.
The emergency filing came after a federal appeals court in New York ruled on Tuesday that Deutsche Bank and Capital One should comply with subpoenas from the House Financial Services and House Intelligence committees seeking information about Trump’s finances.
The House subpoenas seek documents including tax returns, evidence of suspicious activity and, in the case of Deutsche Bank, any internal communications regarding Trump and his ties to foreign individuals.
@MissJava - Can I ask you to kindly ask uou to put under Impeachment plz.
These are tied to uncovering T’s financial links with any foreign entities he seems to be beholden to or perhaps the 'smoking gun."
On Monday, December 9, 2019 , the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing to receive presentations from counsels to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Judiciary Committee, as authorized by the House of Representatives under H. Res. 660. Today, Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) released the names of the counsels who will present before the Committee:
House Committee on the Judiciary
Barry Berke
Majority CounselStephen Castor
Minority CounselHouse Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Daniel Goldman
Majority CounselStephen Castor
Minority CounselPursuant to the Judiciary Committee procedures adopted under H. Res. 660, Monday’s hearing will proceed in two phases. First, Majority and Minority counsel for the Judiciary Committee will present opening statements for up to one hour, equally divided. Second, Majority and Minority counsel for the Intelligence Committee will present for up to 90 minutes, equally divided. Majority and Minority counsel for the Intelligence Committee will then take questions from the Committee.
Date: Monday, December 9, 2019
Time: 9:00 a.m. EST
Location: 1100 Longworth House Office Building
Washington D.C.Livestream: The House Judiciary Committee hearing will stream live here.
116th Congress
Thank you…!
LA Times - endorsed Impeachment. “We’ve seen enough. Trump should be impeached.”
Boston Globe -endorsed Impeachment “make clear that the answer is an urgent yes” to the question of “whether President Trump’s misconduct is severe enough that Congress should exercise that impeachment power, less than a year before the 2020 election.”
NY Daily News “The truth hurts: The House Intelligence Committee presents a coherent and compelling case for impeachment.”
Chicago Tribune - Wants Censure
USA Today - Suggest T has no defense
NY Times
Washington Post
"But both have been critical of Trump’s dealings with Ukraine and efforts to stonewall the inquiry, a process the New York Times editorial board endorsed in late September.
- The Los Angeles Times editorial board on Saturday called for President Donald Trump’s impeachment.
- Less than a week after the impeachment inquiry transitioned into a new phase in the House Judiciary Committee, the Times’ editorial board wrote: “We’ve seen enough. Trump should be impeached.”
- A growing list of major newspapers are publicly calling for Trump’s impeachment, while criticizing his dealings with Ukraine and efforts to stonewall the impeachment inquiry.
The Los Angeles Times editorial board on Saturday called for President Donald Trump to be impeached, joining an expanding list of major newspapers offering public support for either Trump’s impeachment or the impeachment inquiry into his dealings with Ukraine.
Less than a week after the impeachment inquiry transitioned into a new phase in the House Judiciary Committee, the Times’ editorial board wrote: “We’ve seen enough. Trump should be impeached.”
"The Times’ editorial board was a reluctant convert to the impeachment cause," the paper’s editorial board said, citing concerns about how divisive the impeachment against Trump could be and the high probability he’d ultimately be acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate.
"But those concerns must yield to the overwhelming evidence that Trump perverted US foreign policy for his own political gain," the Times’ editorial board added. "That sort of misconduct is outrageous and corrosive of democracy. It can’t be ignored by the House, and it merits a full trial by the Senate on whether to remove him from office."
The Boston Globe earlier this week also called for Trump’s impeachment, with its editorial board writing that the results of the House Intelligence Committee’s inquiry "make clear that the answer is an urgent yes" to the question of "whether President Trump’s misconduct is severe enough that Congress should exercise that impeachment power, less than a year before the 2020 election."
>
Some papers have been less direct, while still leaning toward support for impeachment. The New York Daily News editorial board, for example, wrote on Tuesday: "The truth hurts: The House Intelligence Committee presents a coherent and compelling case for impeachment."Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune has said that both chambers of Congress should censure Trump over his dealings with Ukraine, as opposed to taking the historic action of making him the third president in US History to be impeached.
And USA Today’s editorial board earlier this week said the fact Trump and his legal team have refused to participate in the House Judiciary Committee’s is a “damning argument in itself,” adding that when the reaction to the damning allegations against the president "consists primarily of name-calling and tweeting and denouncing and deflecting, it’s hard to avoid concluding that the White House has no substantive defense to offer."
The Washington Post and The New York Times, perhaps the most prominent papers in the country, have not explicitly called for Trump’s impeachment. But both have been critical of Trump’s dealings with Ukraine and efforts to stonewall the inquiry, a process the New York Times editorial board endorsed in late September.
The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the evidence in the on-going impeachment inquiry against President Trump.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?467123-1/hearing-evidence-impeachment-inquiry&live
