Very nice trick here by the Lawfare advisory and rules committee that is handling the construct of the “Official House Inquiry” on impeachment. It is such a good trick it has everyone crossed-up and confused. Likely, that is by design.
On Thursday of this week Speaker Pelosi is bringing to the floor a resolution to affirm her previous declaration of an “Official House Inquiry”. Mrs. Pelosi is very purposefully and carefully telling reporters this is not a “House resolution on impeachment”. Read the wording carefully:
(LINK)
Speaker Pelosi is holding a vote, a resolution, to affirm her previous declaration of a House “inquiry”. The resolution is currently being written by Lawfare. Pelosi is not delivering a House “Resolution on Impeachment” for a vote, because if she did hold a vote on an impeachment resolution, the minority and the Executive branch would gain rights therein.
This is a House vote to show support for Pelosi’s previous unilateral decree. Right now the rules committee is adding language to the resolution that will provide additional one-sided support for a completely partisan process: “and for other purposes”.
Note in this video, Pelosi is careful to say “this is not an impeachment resolution”:
Speaker Pelosi, asked by @AlexNBCNews to comment on the impeachment resolution:
— Rebecca Kaplan (@RebeccaRKaplan) October 28, 2019
“It’s not an impeachment resolution.” pic.twitter.com/9A6qBan9mf
Additionally, notice that like Pelosi, Chairman Schiff is careful not to use the words “impeachment investigation”, but rather says “impeachment inquiry”:
The rules for an “impeachment investigation” would provide rights for the minority and also rights for the Executive branch.
So instead of having a House vote to authorize an impeachment investigation, with subsequent rights for the minority; they are having a House vote to affirm the “impeachment inquiry” with an entirely different set of House rules that do not include rights for the minority.
Nice trick huh?
On Thursday there will be a House vote to authorize:
…”ongoing investigations as part of the existing House of Representatives inquiry into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its Constitutional power to impeach Donald John Trump, President of the United States of America, and for other purposes.” (link)
And that House vote will include rules to further facilitate the one-sided, official impeachment inquiry, process therein.
Here’s where it gets interesting.
“And for Other Purposes” – The Thursday vote will likely have a rule process to conjoin the House Judiciary Committee (HJC) with the House “official impeachment inquiry”.
Why now? Because the HJC just won a legal ruling from DC Judge Beryl Howell granting the Judiciary Committee formal impeachment authority. {Go Deep}
Lawfare is hoping that through this Thursday vote scheme they will be able to twist the legal process into providing their House inquiry judicial enforcement authority, or punishment possible for the executive not complying with a House committee subpoena.
Pelosi, Schiff and Nadler are hoping to achieve this by bringing in the House Judiciary Committee and the judicial enforcement authority they were just granted by Judge Howell. They are also in a big rush to do this; hence the Thursday vote. The rush is because the DOJ has filed a motion for stay, as they appeal the Judge Howell ruling.
Remember, the Lawfare intent is to pierce the constitutional firewall that creates a distinct separation of powers; and the Legislative branch is trying to force documents from the Executive branch, overriding executive privilege. This is a constitutional issue. This level of impeachment intent is why judicial enforcement authority (the full house authorization to grant weight to legal subpoena power) becomes much more important.
Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler and Lawfare are attempting to create “judicial enforcement authority” without having an actual and constitutional vote to authorize an official “impeachment investigation”. That’s what this Thursday House resolution is all about.
The Thursday House resolution is intended to authorize and validate the pre-existing Pelosi “impeachment inquiry”, and then expand the authority within the rules to create the impression of a full House impeachment investigation; without actually having a House “impeachment investigation vote”…. because that would open-up rights to the minority and rights to the executive.
Of course, as previously stated, none of this would be possible if it were not for the complicit support of the entire national media. Pelosi’s impeachment scheme requires a compliant media to support her construct. So far, they have.
UPDATE: In the DC court the DOJ has filed a motion to stay the Judge Howell ruling as they appeal the decision. The stay motion appears pretty solid on three of the four corner arguments.The weakest aspect to the motion is the legal framework around “judicial enforcement authority.” In part because the impeachment precedent is thin; and in part because the Judiciary Committee angle is about gaining evidence underneath the Mueller report – not the House Ukraine investigation.
Here’s the motion for stay:
.
If Judge Howell doesn’t grant the stay pending appeal, the DOJ would have to look for an emergency injunction. In the interim, Pelosi, Schiff and Nadler are looking to exploit the Howell decision that accepted, some would say ‘created‘, the existence of a formal House impeachment proceeding despite the non-existence of an authorizing vote.
In essence, Lawfare is trying to exploit a decision -quickly- that put the cart (impeachment) before the horse (vote); and leverage that judicial ruling as a back-door to grant full judicial enforcement authority over the House impeachment inquiry.
The optics therein is what the sham vote is intended to present. As if the full House voted to allow the committee’s go gain judicial enforcement authorityand change the committee request letters into actual and enforceable subpoenas.
I hope that helps make sense of it all. Right now it feels like CTH is up against the entire DC Lawfare process, in explaining what is going on; and what are the motives and intents behind all of these moves….
Our united job is to STAND UP and explain this complex non-constitutional process to our friends, family and neighbors.