Judiciary Committee asks a judge to share Mueller's secret grand jury evidence - Politico
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The House Judiciary Committee has formally asked a federal judge to release former special counsel Robert Mueller’s most closely guarded evidence: the material he gathered using a secretive grand jury.
The petition, submitted Friday to Beryl Howell, the chief judge of Washington, D.C.’s federal district court, asks that the material be provided to Congress, though it does not directly seek the public release of the grand jury evidence.
House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler has sought Mueller’s grand jury evidence since the spring, arguing that it’s essential for Congress to view in order to fully investigate potential abuses of power by President Donald Trump and his inner circle.
Nadler has previously asked the Justice Department and Attorney General William Barr to join him in court to seek the release of the information, but Barr has declined, calling such a move unprecedented.
"When we win — and we will win the court fight because the legal excuses the White House has been using are extraordinarily weak from a legal point of view — when we win, it’ll open up the floodgates to enforce all the subpoenas and get all the testimony because they’re all the same nonsense legal arguments," Nadler said on CNN on Friday morning.
While some Democratic members have been working arduously to build support for a House resolution officially opening an impeachment inquiry against Trump, the new legal filing argues that the committee has been conducting such an investigation for months.
“Where, as here, the Committee is conducting an investigation whose purposes include determining whether to recommend articles of impeachment, that is more than sufficient,” House lawyers argued. “The Committee…is investigating whether to recommend articles of impeachment and requires access to [grand jury] materials in furtherance of that investigation.”
The legal filing concedes that the full House has yet to directly authorize an impeachment probe, but contends the rules of the House and past precedent do not require it.
“Additionally, although the House has not considered a formal resolution structuring any particular proceedings by this Committee…such a resolution is not a necessary predicate to consideration of articles of impeachment,” the petition says.
Judiciary Committee lawyers told reporters Friday that there’s no need for the House to use “magic words” to recognize that the committee is using its authority to gather information that might lead to impeachment.
“It’s not a light you switch on and off,” said one panel attorney, who asked not to be named.
A spokeswoman for committee Republicans disagreed.
“The House is either formally in impeachment proceedings, which involve both an impeachment inquiry and consideration of articles of impeachment, or we are not. It’s a binary issue,” the spokeswoman, Jessica Andrews, said.
Lawyers for the committee conceded Friday that the last two serious impeachment efforts against presidents did involve House floor resolutions at some point, but noted that many other impeachments of lower-level officials like judges have been thoroughly investigated by the Judiciary Committee before any floor action took place.
Nadler's petition is the start of a new wave of legal action to force more of Mueller's evidence into Congress' hands.
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Nancy Pelosi has acquiesced to Jerry Nadler's court filing that claims the House Judiciary Committee is undertaking an impeachment investigation. Pelosi has every right to pull Nadler's chairmanship but that isn't what has happened. The significance of this move by Nadler is that Nancy Pelosi is no longer the leader of House Democrats. House Democrats are officially splintered.
Since the House has recessed for six weeks, Nadler's move will likely be overlooked in news reporting. My expectation is that Nancy Pelosi will make some sort of wishy washy public statement about an investigation being different than impeachment proceedings and that Democrats remain united in pursuing the facts.
While it seems obvious that Jerry Nadler has undertaken this approach as a means to a political end; nevertheless Nadler has crossed a threshold. If the court consents to Jerry Nadler's request then Nadler has essentially made impeachment proceedings a foregone conclusion. Nancy Pelosi has lost this leadership battle.
If this action moves forward, the House will be involved in impeachment proceedings next year during the election campaigns. The 2020 election is shaping up to become very dirty, indeed.
Nancy Pelosi is indeed the Leader of the House Democrats despite you saying she is not
Nancy is the Chief Cat Herder
We are way past any possibility of impeaching the president and we have been for a long time. The Democratic leadership knows this very well.
There's probably nothing in the grand jury testimony anyway that would hurt Trump, or it would have made its way into Mueller's report. The stuff Congress hasn't seen is not going to be information relevant to their inquiry.
Each of these moves that the House takes is, instead, an attempt to keep scandal in the public consciousness so as to hurt Trump in the next election.
This week's hearings with Bob Mueller is a good example. Nothing new was learned. Everybody knew in advance he wasn't going to supply anything new. But the event could serve, in some small way, to keep people thinking that action needs to be taken to get Trump out of office. That action will have to come from voters because it isn't coming from Congress.
And that's fine, but meanwhile our judicial and legislative systems are being abused and governance is set aside - all as part of a political tactic to win the next election. They care more about defeating the Republicans than they do about actually getting something done.
But that is a two edged sword. Nadler may only be utilizing this to keep scandal in the headlines but failing to more forward with impeachment proceedings creates a public perception that this is nothing more than partisan politics. Voters are going to lose interest in a repetition of information that was disclosed before the last election. If three years of investigation by numerous agencies and Congress has not found a smoking gun, there likely isn't one.
Failing to initiate impeachment proceedings will be a vindication for Trump. Democrats will be perceived as not having a backbone. Nadler's move is making impeachment during the general election a foregone conclusion.
Impeachment proceedings in the Senate will provide Republicans a public spectacle to question the basis for the investigations. The FBI and the intelligence agencies will be burned. And it's quite possible that Hillary Clinton will be required to testify before the Senate concerning the Steele dossier and how it became supporting evidence in the various investigations. Democrats want to litigate the last election but Republicans will have the opportunity litigate the last election. Again, Trump will be vindicated.
The next election will be the Democrats' to win or lose. By focusing attention on Trump, as Democrats did last election, Democrats may be conceding the election to Trump. So far, Trump is running unopposed and is control of the message on issues. Democrats' outrage over Trump's scandals is in the headlines but Democratic candidates for President are not. Democrats are not offering an alternative to Trump.