President Trump is done cooperating with the House impeachment inquiry, White House Counsel Pat Cipollone.
"Your unprecedented actions have left the President with no choice," he told the House Democratic leadership: the Trump administration "Cannot participate in your partisan and unconstitutional inquiry under these circumstances." We're done here: It's a "Full halt," full stop.
One of the articles of impeachment that drove the 37th president out of office was based on disobeying congressional subpoenas and making bogus executive privilege claims.
Article III against Nixon, passed by the House Judiciary Committee on July 30, 1974, charged the president with having "Failed without lawful cause or excuse to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas" issued by the Judiciary Committee, "Thereby assuming to himself functions and judgments necessary to the exercise of the sole power of impeachment vested by the Constitution in the House of Representatives." In other words, Nixon's resistance to lawful demands for evidence in an impeachment inquiry was itself grounds for impeachment.
As the Judiciary Committee's Report on the Nixon impeachment noted, of dozens of federal officers who'd been the subject of impeachment investigations up till that time "Not one of them challenged the power of the committee conducting the investigation to compel the evidence it deemed necessary." Even President Andrew Johnson-who might have had better cause to complain of a "Kangaroo court"-never "Asserted any privilege to prevent disclosure of presidential conversations to the Committee, or failed to comply with any of the Committee's requests."
How should the House respond to President Trump's uber-Nixonian intransigence? Cipollone's letter is mostly bluster and nonsense, confusing impeachment with a criminal process and demanding due process protections unavailable to grand jury targets actually at risk of losing their liberty instead of, as in Trump's case, merely being put out of a job.
As the HJC Report explained in 1974, "Unless the defiance of the Committee's subpoenas under these circumstances is considered grounds for impeachment, it is difficult to conceive of any President acknowledging that he is obligated to supply the relevant evidence necessary for Congress to exercise its constitutional responsibility."
https://www.cato.org/blog/impeach-me-i-dare-you
"Your unprecedented actions have left the President with no choice," he told the House Democratic leadership: the Trump administration "Cannot participate in your partisan and unconstitutional inquiry under these circumstances." We're done here: It's a "Full halt," full stop.
One of the articles of impeachment that drove the 37th president out of office was based on disobeying congressional subpoenas and making bogus executive privilege claims.
Article III against Nixon, passed by the House Judiciary Committee on July 30, 1974, charged the president with having "Failed without lawful cause or excuse to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas" issued by the Judiciary Committee, "Thereby assuming to himself functions and judgments necessary to the exercise of the sole power of impeachment vested by the Constitution in the House of Representatives." In other words, Nixon's resistance to lawful demands for evidence in an impeachment inquiry was itself grounds for impeachment.
As the Judiciary Committee's Report on the Nixon impeachment noted, of dozens of federal officers who'd been the subject of impeachment investigations up till that time "Not one of them challenged the power of the committee conducting the investigation to compel the evidence it deemed necessary." Even President Andrew Johnson-who might have had better cause to complain of a "Kangaroo court"-never "Asserted any privilege to prevent disclosure of presidential conversations to the Committee, or failed to comply with any of the Committee's requests."
How should the House respond to President Trump's uber-Nixonian intransigence? Cipollone's letter is mostly bluster and nonsense, confusing impeachment with a criminal process and demanding due process protections unavailable to grand jury targets actually at risk of losing their liberty instead of, as in Trump's case, merely being put out of a job.
As the HJC Report explained in 1974, "Unless the defiance of the Committee's subpoenas under these circumstances is considered grounds for impeachment, it is difficult to conceive of any President acknowledging that he is obligated to supply the relevant evidence necessary for Congress to exercise its constitutional responsibility."
https://www.cato.org/blog/impeach-me-i-dare-you
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