There will be 24 hours of presentation by House Impeachment Managers (over 3 days); 24 hours of presentation by Defense team (over 3 days); 16 hours of Senate questioning; 4 hours of closing arguments, equally divided; and then a Senate debate/vote on further motions to include witnesses. If there are going to be witnesses, they will first be deposed prior to testimony. No witness testimony will be permitted without first being deposed.

The Senate Trial continues today with the third day opening session at 1:00pm EST.  Today is the second 8 hr day of arguments by House Impeachment Managers.

PBS Livestream Link – Fox10 News Livestream Link – Fox Business – CSPAN Link

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Many people are becoming aware the Senate impeachment trial is an exercise in politics, nothing more.  The votes are already decided; the trial is simply a pantomime.

To highlight the point, Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, simply walked out during the trial when Adam Schiff was testifying; said “goodnight” and just went home.

Washington Post congressional reporter Paul Kane noted:

(LINK)

As 21 different state attorneys general noted earlier today, there are several reasons why the impeachment effort is unconstitutional.  These are not process arguments; they are factual arguments central to the constitutional framework of our government.

The failure of a full House vote to authorize the House Judiciary Committee to pursue evidence -via enforceable subpoenas- was a defect by design of Nancy Pelosi’s decision to initiate an impeachment inquiry by her decree, not an authorizing vote.  White House lawyer Patrick Philbin explains the legal issue; this could be the lead argument in the defense case when it starts.  [Video prompted to 03:20]

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CTH noted this structural issue last August, and the issue remained throughout the heavily manipulated proceedings. None of the House requests for testimony or documents held any enforcement authority because the House did not follow the constitutional process.

The House was not issuing subpoenas, it was issuing letters requesting voluntary witness participation and document production. Recently the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel explained this issue in a lengthy legal finding that leads to the same conclusion.

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BACKSTORY – Last year House Democrat leadership took a climate assessment of democrat House members and Speaker Pelosi announced they would not hold a House impeachment authorization vote. As a direct and specific consequence all committee subpoenas did not carry a penalty for non-compliance.

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“Lawful subpoenas”, literally require an enforcement mechanism; that’s the “poena” part of the word. The enforcement mechanism is a judicial penalty, and that penalty can only be created if the full House voted to authorize an impeachment inquiry, and charged the House Judiciary Committee with the authority therein.

Absent the vote to authorize, the Legislative Branch never established compulsion authority (aka judicial enforcement authority), as they attempted to work through their quasi-constitutional “impeachment inquiry” process.

Instead of subpoenas, Adam Schiff (House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence); and Chairman Eliot L. Engel (House Committee on Foreign Affairs) were only sending out request letters. The compliance was discretionary based on the outlook of the recipient.

Nancy Pelosi did not have the vote or political capital to start by initiating a full House impeachment authorization. Pelosi, Schiff, Engel and Cummings had to rely on the duplicity of the media to help them hide their scheme; and the media complied.

Speaker Pelosi & Lawfare’s impeachment scheme could only succeed with a compliant media protecting it. The media was entirely compliant in not explaining the fraudulent basis for the construct.

If the media would have ever asked questions the fraud would have collapsed.

Adam Schiff had to hide his hearings because the foundation of the impeachment fraud was to create a public impression. There was no structural impeachment process or guideline being followed. The committee leadership used the closed door hearings to leak information to the media to create a needed narrative.

A legislative “letter” or demand request needed to carry judicial enforcement authority –A PENALTY– in order to be a “subpoena”.

There was no penalty that can be associated with the House demands because the Legislative Branch did not established compulsion authority (aka judicial enforcement authority), as they worked through their non-constitutional “impeachment inquiry” process.

It has long been 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, a power made possible by SCOTUS precedent, that carries inherent penalties for non-compliance, and is specifically allowed for impeachment investigations. However, that level of elevated House authority required a full House authorization vote, and only applies to the House Judiciary Committee as empowered.

In 2019 the Legislative Branch was NOT expressing their “impeachment authority” as part of the Legislative Branch purpose. So that raised 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 the Judiciary Committee has subpoena power that can overcome executive privilege claims.

There was NO VOTE to create that level of subpoena power.

As a consequence, the House did not create a process to penetrate the constitutionally inherent separation of powers, and/or, the legally recognized firewall known as ‘executive privilege’.

The House needed to vote to authorize the committee impeachment investigation, and through that process the committee would have gained judicial enforcement authority. That would have created a penalty for non-compliance with an impeachment subpoena.

Absent a penalty for non-compliance, which factually makes a subpoena a ‘subpoena’, the Executive Branch had no process to engage an appellate review by federal courts. This was the purposeful trick within the Pelosi/Lawfare road-map.

Pelosi and Lawfare’s plan was designed for public consumption; she/they were creating the illusion of something that did not exist. The purpose of all their fraudulent impeachment activity was to create support for an actual impeachment process.

Because the Lawfare/Pelosi roadmap intended to work around judicial enforcement authority, the impeachment process was destined by design to end up running head-first into a constitutional problem; specifically separation of power and executive privilege.

The Lawfare impeachment road-map was designed to conflict with the constitution. It was a necessary -and unavoidable- feature of their sketchy impeachment plan, not a flaw.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her Lawfare allies changed House rules (SEE HERE). Pelosi and Lawfare changed House impeachment rules (SEE HERE). Pelosi/Lawfare changed committee rules (SEE HERE); and in doing so they removed House republicans from the entire process… Which They Did. However, what Lawfare and Pelosi could not change was The U.S. Constitution, which they were destined to collide with.

Speaker Pelosi’s ‘Lawfare House rules‘ and/or ‘Lawfare impeachment rules‘ could not supersede the constitutional separation of powers. She was well aware of this. Nancy Pelosi could not decree an “official impeachment inquiry”, and as a consequence nullify a constitutional firewall between the Legislative Branch and Executive Branch.

Pelosi’s impeachment scheme required a compliant media to support her construct…

They did exactly that.

President Trump’s co-lead counsel, Jay Sekulow, discusses his perspective on the opening arguments for the House impeachment case.   As Sekulow notes, so far the House appears to be attempting to leverage impeachment for a difference in foreign policy outlooks:

Unfortunately, one of the necessities of this ridiculous impeachment effort is to have fact-based advocates who can debunk impeachment lies before the narrative engineers (media) has a cycle to run with them.  That’s one of the reasons why Lee Zeldin, Jim Jordan, John Ratcliffe and Mark Meadows are so important.

In this quick media briefing, the truth tellers quickly debunk the narrative (story) being spun within the upper chamber by Adam Schiff’s lying House Managers.  John Ratcliffe hones-in on the timeline and rattles-off the dates as an experienced litigator.  WATCH: