Representative Doug Collins appears on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the specific strategy behind the Pelosi-Shiff and Lawfare ongoing impeachment effort.
Collins explains why Adam Schiff is holding hearings behind closed doors so they can selectively leak out information that supports the Democrat narrative of impeachment, while also hiding the evidence that refutes their construct. Additionally, Rep Collins explains his expectations for the upcoming FISA review by Inspector General Horowitz.
Speaker Pelosi, with forethought and planning by the Lawfare Alliance, is intentionally using non-jurisdictional committees because she is manipulating the process. It’s the same reason why the House Intelligence, House Foreign Affairs and House Oversight committees cannot legally send out “Impeachment-based Subpoenas“; they have no impeachment jurisdiction. {Go Deep} and {Go Deep} to understand why.
The “impeachment” subpoenas’ are not technically subpoenas because the basis for the requests, impeachment inquiry, is not within the jurisdiction of the three committees. So the committees are sending out demand letters, calling them subpoenas (media complies with the narrative), and hoping the electorate do not catch on to the scheme.
The House democrats will keep doing this until someone in the media begins to hit them with hard questions that expose the nonsense.
Chairman Adam Schiff (House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence); Chairman Elijah E. Cummings (Committee on White House Oversight; and Chairman Eliot L. Engel (House Committee on Foreign Affairs) continue sending carefully worded letters under the guise of ‘subpoenas’. [Main Link Here]
Again, just like all prior examples, this is not a “subpoena”, it is a letter calling itself a “subpoena” and carries NO legal penalty for non-compliance. A legislative “letter” needs to carry judicial enforcement authority –A PENALTY– in order to be a “subpoena”.
There is no penalty that can be associated with these demands because the Legislative Branch has not established compulsion authority (aka judicial enforcement authority), as they attempt to work through their non-constitutional “impeachment inquiry” process.
It has long been well established by SCOTUS that Congress has lawful (judicial authority) subpoena powers pursuant to its implied responsibility of legislative oversight. However, that only applies to the powers enumerated in A1§8. Neither foreign policy (Ukraine) nor impeachment have any nexus to A1§8. The customary Legislative Branch subpoena power is limited to their legislative purpose.
There is an elevated level of subpoena, made power possible by SCOTUS precedent, that carries inherent penalties for non-compliance, and is specifically allowed for impeachment investigations. That level of elevated House authority requires a full House authorization vote.
In this current example the Legislative Branch is expressing their “impeachment authority” as part of the Legislative Branch purpose. So that raises the issue of an entirely different type of subpoena:… A demand from congress that penetrates the constitutional separation of powers; and further penetrates the legal authority of Executive Branch executive privilege.
It was separately established by SCOTUS during the Nixon impeachment investigation that *IF* the full House votes to have the Judiciary Committee commence an impeachment investigation, then Judiciary (only) has subpoena power that can overcome executive privilege claims.
There has been NO VOTE to create that level of subpoena power.
As a consequence, the House has not created a process to penetrate the constitutionally inherent separation of powers, and/or, the legally recognized firewall known as ‘executive privilege’. The House must vote to authorize the committee impeachment investigation, and through that process the committee gains judicial enforcement authority. This creates the penalty for non-compliance with an impeachment subpoena.
A demand letter only becomes a “subpoena”, technically meaning: ‘a request for the production of documents with a penalty for non-compliance’, when the committee has judicial enforcement authority. That process establishes an enforcement penalty.
The current demand letters cannot carry a penalty because the demands do not contain judicial enforcement authority…. because the impeachment investigation was not authorized by the chamber.
The reason judicial enforcement authority is constitutionally required is because creating Judicial enforcement authority, creating the penalty for non-compliance, gives the Executive Branch a process to appeal any legislative demand via the Judicial Branch (federal courts).
Absent a penalty for non-compliance, which factually makes a subpoena a ‘subpoena’, the Executive Branch has no process to engage an appellate review by federal courts. This is the purposeful trick within the Pelosi/Lawfare road-map.
Pelosi and Lawfare’s plans are designed for public consumption; she/they are creating the illusion of something that doesn’t exist. The purpose of all this fraudulent impeachment activity is to create support for an actual impeachment process.
Because the current Lawfare/Pelosi roadmap intends to work around judicial enforcement authority, the impeachment process is destined by design to end up running head-first into a constitutional problem; specifically separation of power and executive privilege. That predictable constitutional issue will end up with arguments to The Supreme Court.
THAT appears to be why Democrats and left-wing activists have been working for months to de-legitimize the Supreme Court. They always intended to run into this problem. They planned for it.
The Lawfare impeachment road-map is designed to conflict with the constitution. It is a necessary -and unavoidable- feature of their impeachment plan, not a flaw.
Speaker Pelosi, working through a carefully constructed political dynamic assembled by the hired staff from the Lawfare alliance, has sold her constituency on an impeachment process that structurally doesn’t exist.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi could never succeed in the scheme were she not assisted by a compliant media. Pelosi is burning a constitutional process.
Speaker Pelosi does not want to engage the judicial branch, nor does she want to give the target (President Trump) the opportunity to engage the judicial branch, ie. court.
The judicial branch would likely upend her House committee “official impeachment inquiry” scheme, just as D.C. District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell recently did toJudiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler for “gaming the system“. Speaker Pelosi’s unilateral decree for an “official impeachment inquiry” without a House vote will not pass court review.
This is a carefully constructed subversion of the constitutional processes and procedures.
After the 2018 mid-terms, and in preparation for the “impeachment” strategy, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler hired Lawfare Group members to become committee staff. Chairman Schiff hired former SDNY U.S. Attorney Daniel Goldman (link), and Chairman Nadler hired Obama Administration lawyer Norm Eisen and criminal defense attorney Barry Berke (link), all are within the Lawfare network.
As a result of the need to create the optics of something that doesn’t exist; and following the roadmap they outlined in 2018 [See Here and Here]; the Lawfare contractors within the committees’ needed to construct a penalty mechanism that benefits the impeachment agenda but avoids the court system. As a result we see this:
Nice Lawfare trick huh?…
