It is not a process argument, but rather a matter of constitutional preservation.

Twenty-one State Attorneys’ General submit a brief to the Senate (full pdf below) in support of complete rejection for the House articles of impeachment.

…”If not expressly repudiated by the Senate, the theories animating both Articles will set a precedent that is entirely contrary to the Framers’ design and ruinous to the most important governmental structure protections contained in our Constitution: the separation of powers”…

South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson along with twenty additional State AG’s, submit a 14-page briefing (download here) to the United States Senate warning of the danger of not rejecting a purely partisan political impeachment effort. The Attorneys’ General note the current impeachment proceedings are “fundamentally flawed as a matter of constitutional law.” Their concerns are echo points starting to be realized by Senators.

During a press conference in front of the U.S. Capitol Wednesday, South Carolina AG Alan Wilson said the group was urging the Senate to “reject these articles” as a matter of constitutional law. WATCH:

Here’s the Brief:

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“Because the legal theories underlying both Articles I and II are legally flawed and factually insufficient, as well as inherently destructive of separation of powers, the Senate should explicitly reject them to protect both the institution of the Presidency and the Constitution.

A close examination of the legal theories and stipulations of fact accompanying Articles I and II reveal their fatal flaws.2 It is important to note that the focus of this legal analysis will be on the stipulations of fact relied upon by the House at the time of the impeachment vote because this is the precedent upon which all future impeachment proceedings will rely.”

It is a well written brief and exactly on point.

To assist in page-load-time we’re breaking up the Senate Impeachment discussion threads.

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 second session at 3:50pm EST, continuing with with opening arguments by House Impeachment Managers.

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

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Awesome video from the National Republican Senatorial Campaign motivating all U.S. Senators to hold the line and dispatch this attack on the constitution.  WATCH:

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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is attempting to rescue two legally and structurally deficient articles of impeachment rushed from the Lawfare community in the House of representatives.   However, in his first effort to introduce new documents and force the Trump administration to hand over new executive branch information, related to President Trump foreign policy decisions and delayed foreign aid to Ukraine, the Schumer amendment was defeated.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell moved to table the amendment, dismissing the request, and won a floor vote as all republican senators stayed united 53-47.

It is anticipated that Schumer will next move for another amendment making the same request for new State Department documents the House committees did not seek.

The primary reason Chuck Schumer has to make this ridiculous effort for more evidence, is how the House never established their ability to enforce subpoenas via “Judicial Enforcement Authority”.  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.

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.

(Source)

“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.

The U.S. Senate Impeachment Trial of President Donald Trump begins today at 1:00pm Eastern.  The first series of anticipated events includes the framework for Senate rules for impeachment which will come in the form of a final resolution for Senate vote.

The formation of the impeachment rules, and any amendments therein, will likely take up the majority of the afternoon in the Senate.  Anticipated start time 1:00pm EST.

Fox News Livestream – Fox Business Livestream – RSBN Livestream Link

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Earlier today Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell presented a “draft resolution” for Senate impeachment rules to be debated and voted tomorrow on Day One of the impeachment trial.  Day #1 will likely be filled as the Senate creates rules via resolution.

The draft resolution tracks closely with previous expectations: 24 hours of presentation by House Impeachment Managers; 24 hours of presentation by Defense team; 16 hours of Senate questioning; 4 hours of closing arguments; and then a Senate debate/vote on further motions to include witnesses.

As noted in the draft resolution it appears the Majority Leader will keep the Senate in 12 hour sessions to speed up the events.  This would conclude the House case and the defense case within four days (24 hrs, or two days per side).

According to the draft, the legal teams for each side will decide who makes the verbal arguments over their two days of presentation.  At the conclusion of the four days the Senators will ask questions for a total of 16 hours.

At the conclusion of the Senators questions the House Managers and White House defense will have two hours each to rebut and/or present additional (closing) arguments.

At the conclusion of the 4 hour final remarks the Senators will debate whether to call for witnesses.  The outcome to that debate will be decided by a majority of 51 votes.

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.

Again, this is a draft resolution.  There will be a debate and amendment process tomorrow to create the final resolution.  It will take 51 votes to create the rules.

The gang is getting back together again.  Representatives Jim Jordan, John Ratcliffe, Mark Meadows, Debbie Lesko, Elise Stefanik, Lee Zeldin and Doug Collins have been selected as additions to President Trump’s impeachment defense team. UPDATE: and Mike Johnson

The MAGAnificent Seven

WHITE HOUSE – Today, President Donald J. Trump announced that the following Members of the House of Representatives will serve as part of his team working to combat this hyper-partisan and baseless impeachment. This initial list includes the following Members:

♦ Congressman Doug Collins
♦ Congressman Jim Jordan
♦ Congresswoman Debbie Lesko
♦ Congressman Mark Meadows
♦ Congressman John Ratcliffe
♦ Congresswoman Elise Stefanik
♦ Congressman Lee Zeldin
♦ ¹Congressman Mike Johnson

Throughout this process, these Members of Congress have provided guidance to the White House team, which was prohibited from participating in the proceedings concocted by Democrats in the House of Representatives. The President looks forward to their continued participation and is confident that the Members will help expeditiously end this brazen political vendetta on behalf of the American people. (link)

UPDATE – Oh man, they messed up my “MAGAnificent Seven” slogan by unexpectedly having eight. LOL.  Oh well, “Elite Eight” (pictured below) because it makes sense to include an actual constitutional attorney ¹Mike Johnson.  This is a big honor.  These names will appear in history books generations from now.

…And not Matt Gaetz LOL

“The Elite Eight”

The lawyers representing President Trump and lawyers representing the Office of the Presidency collectively file a response briefing, a trial memorandum, to the Senate (full pdf below).  The 170-page rebuttal to the House articles is HERE and embedded below:

The Articles of Impeachment now before the Senate are an affront to the Constitution and to our democratic institutions. The Articles themselves—and the rigged process that brought them here—are a brazenly political act by House Democrats that must be rejected.

They debase the grave power of impeachment and disdain the solemn responsibility that power entails. Anyone having the most basic respect for the sovereign will of the American people would shudder at the enormity of casting a vote to impeach a duly elected President.

By contrast, upon tallying their votes, House Democrats jeered until they were scolded into silence by the Speaker. The process that brought the articles here violated every precedent and every principle of fairness followed in impeachment inquiries for more than 150 years.

Even so, all that House Democrats have succeeded in proving is that the President did absolutely nothing wrong. All of this is a dangerous perversion of the Constitution that the Senate should swiftly and roundly condemn.

[LINK to Trial Memorandum]