{"id":798105,"date":"2019-07-30T14:36:33","date_gmt":"2019-07-30T20:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=369313"},"modified":"2019-07-30T14:36:33","modified_gmt":"2019-07-30T20:36:33","slug":"opinion-mike-littwin-whatever-trump-or-pelosi-hopes-it-looks-like-impeachment-isnt-quite-dead-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/opinion-mike-littwin-whatever-trump-or-pelosi-hopes-it-looks-like-impeachment-isnt-quite-dead-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Mike Littwin: Whatever Trump or Pelosi hopes, it looks like impeachment isn\u2019t quite dead yet"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Mike Littwin<\/strong>
The Colorado Independent<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

For those still keeping score at home, Robert Mueller is out, and Jerry Nadler is now in.<\/p>\n

Anyone (like me) who thought the momentum for impeachment was dead following the Mueller hearings seems to have gotten it wrong. It turns out, as Miracle Max would put it, it\u2019s only mostly dead. And maybe not even that.<\/p>\n

As you may have heard, Nadler, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, is beginning an impeachment inquiry, which, because we\u2019re talking politics here, will not be called an impeachment inquiry. It\u2019s not clear what it will be called, but I\u2019m guessing Trump will come up with a nickname.<\/p>\n

Nadler does concede that the committee investigation is \u201cin effect\u201d an impeachment inquiry, but not quite one because \u2014 here we go \u2014 impeachment is only one of the possible outcomes from Nadler\u2019s decision to go to court in bids to enforce several ignored-to-this-point-by-Trump-administration subpoenas. What other outcomes? I guess instead of impeachment, they could, say, vote to cut off the White House cable TV connection. But let\u2019s be real. This is a big first step. It would even bigger, and maybe more urgent, if Congress were not about to take its six-week summer recess.<\/p>\n

Some people will be working, though. The first subpoena covers the committee\u2019s request for grand jury information from the special counsel\u2019s Russia probe. And the other would be to force testimony from former White House counsel Don McGahn, who, according to the report, rejected Trump\u2019s order to tell the attorney general\u2019s office to fire Mueller as special counsel and then turned down Trump\u2019s, uh, suggestion that McGahn lie about the fact that Trump told him to help fire Mueller.<\/p>\n

If you listened closely to Mueller\u2019s testimony, when asked about McGahn, he answered, I believe, \u201cyes\u201d on whether McGahn rejected playing any role in firing Mueller and \u201cthat\u2019s correct\u201d on whether Trump asked McGahn to lie about it.<\/p>\n

Democrats are now hoping McGahn would be the star witness that Mueller didn\u2019t turn out to be. (Please, remember, Mueller warned everyone that he wouldn\u2019t say anything that wasn\u2019t already in the report. And, it turns out, he meant it.)<\/p>\n

The reason the Judiciary Committee investigation is not being officially called an \u201cimpeachment inquiry\u201d is because Nancy Pelosi doesn\u2019t want it to be. The odds are that an official inquiry of Trump would lead to a recommendation of impeachment, meaning the House might eventually have to vote on it. And Pelosi remains unconvinced that voting to impeach \u2014 which would never result in a Senate conviction \u2014 is the best path to to take. Let\u2019s just say not everyone agrees. There are now 101 House Democrats who favor impeachment proceedings, including Colorado\u2019s Diana DeGette and Joe Neguse. And many more pundits who wonder if Republicans ever worried they were going too far when they got to the upteenth Benghazi hearing.<\/p>\n

But Pelosi did support Nadler\u2019s use of impeachment as a reason to investigate Trump. That\u2019s because it\u2019s not as likely \u2014 according to the legal experts \u2014 that a judge would force Trump to hand over documents or to allow witnesses to testify without citing an impeachment inquiry. So here we are, in semantic land.<\/p>\n

Nadler is arguing that since the Justice Department has a rule that a sitting president can\u2019t be prosecuted and since Mueller\u2019s report has laid out a possible case of Trumpian obstruction of justice \u2014 one from which Mueller pointedly says Trump has not been \u201cexonerated \u2014 the committee filing says \u201cthe United States House of Representatives is the only institution of the federal government that can now hold President Trump accountable for these actions.\u201d <\/p>\n

In holding Trump accountable, the committee\u2019s filing cites the House\u2019s \u201cfull Article 1 powers,\u201d including articles of impeachment. Of course, Trump now often cites his own version of Article 2 constitutional powers, \u201cwhere,\u201d he says, \u201cI have the right to do whatever I want as president.\u201d<\/p>\n

The semantics here are not important. Committee members flanking Nadler during a news conference Friday said it was, in fact, an inquiry. Verona Escobar, a Texas Democrat, says, \u201cWe\u2019re crossing a threshold with this filing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Naturally Trump responded, telling reporters that the Mueller report \u2014 which we can safely assume Trump has never read \u2014 fully exonerated him, whatever Mueller has said about it. Of course Trump hasn\u2019t read it. I mean, even his FBI director, Chris Wray, admitted he hadn\u2019t read \u201cevery word\u201d of it, without clarifying how many he missed.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Trump did his best to change the subject by saying that Barack and Michelle Obama\u2019s book deal should be investigated. OK, he didn\u2019t offer a rationale for that, but, as he may have noted, he can \u2014 and does \u2014 do whatever he wants as president, including, the Supreme Court ruled Friday, take money from the Defense Department budget to build a fence he promised Mexico would pay for.<\/p>\n

After hitting the Obamas for writing, Trump then explained why he will spend part of August at his golf course in Bedminster, N.J., instead of staying at the White House. If you guessed that this, too, must be Obama\u2019s fault, you have been paying full attention.<\/p>\n

Trump says he needs to spend time away because from the White House because of maintenance work, noting, \u201cThe Obama administration worked out a brand new air conditioning system for the West Wing. It was so good before they did the system. Now that they did this system, it\u2019s freezing or hot.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure how much time Trump spent in the West Wing before the new air conditioning system was installed, but maybe McGahn can help us get to the bottom of it. Nadler and his committee and a growing number of Democrats hope so.<\/p>\n

Mike Littwin writes the biweekly column \u201cFair and Unbalanced\u201d for The Colorado Independent. He previously worked at The Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, Los Angeles Times and Baltimore Sun. Contact him at<\/em> mike@coloradoindependent.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mike LittwinThe Colorado Independent For those still keeping score at home, Robert Mueller is out, and Jerry Nadler is now in. Anyone (like me) who thought the momentum for impeachment was dead following the Mueller hearings seems to have gotten it wrong. It turns out, as Miracle Max would put it, it\u2019s only mostly dead. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-798105","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-18 13:22:28","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}