Slick moves by Pelosi and Schiff’s Lawfare team.  Today the contracted legal staff within House Intelligence Committee have produced a House “Impeachment Inquiry” resolution to be voted on tomorrow.  The resolution (full pdf below) contains the rules constructed by Shiff’s Lawfare staff, for public HPSCI hearings.

The House impeachment resolution blocks President Trump’s lawyers from participating in the House process until the hand-off to the Judiciary Committee for article assembly.

Within the House resolution is a process to transfer the evidence from the three investigative committee chairs: Schiff, Engel and Maloney, to Jerry Nadler at Judiciary. [The process within Judicary will be assembling the ‘articles of impeachment’.]

What Pelosi/Schiff et al have assembled is a format for a highly controlled public spectacle prior to a predetermined transfer of evidence to Jerry Nadler (Judicary).  With the intent to construct a pantomime for public absorption in mind, the rules are written for maximum narrative construction. [ex. Lawfare lawyers will question witnesses]

The rules within the resolution outline the guidance for at least one public hearing from the HPSCI prior to transfer to Judiciary.  The Oversight Committee, Foreign Affairs Committee and Intelligence Committee are assembling publicly under the House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) for that/those public hearing(s).

Key points from rules:

• The Executive Branch will not be permitted to participate in the open HPSCI hearing.
• President Trump lawyers will not be permitted to question witnesses in the open HPSCI hearing.
• Ranking member of HPSCI (Nunes) may have subpoena power subject to pre-approval by Chairman Adam Schiff.  Requests must be made in writing.  Chair is not mandated to approve.
• Ranking member of HPSCI (Nunes) may have ability to request witnesses subject to pre-approval by Chairman Adam Schiff. Requests must be made in writing. Chair is not mandated to approve.
• Schiff (Chairman) and Nunes (Ranking member) will each have 90 minutes (aggregate) to question any witness brought before the committee.  All other committee members will have 5 minutes each, per witness. [Remember this is a member assembly of 3 committees]
• The Chairman can allow contracted legal staff (Lawfare) to question witnesses, as part of his 90-minutes of available questioning.
• The Chair is authorized, though not required, to make depositions public.
• Upon completion of the hearing(s), the HPSCI chairman shall write a **report to the Judiciary (Nadler) with instructions of findings.  The chair may include dissent from the minority opinion therein.

[**Note: IMHO this report has already been written.  That was the purpose for the basement hearings.  All of this public testimony is for public consumption to support the premise of a constitutional impeachment proceedings.  It’s a farce.]

• The resolution then provides a process for the HPSCI report to transfer all of the assembled tri-committee material to the House Judiciary Committee where Jerry Nadler will take over.

The next part of the resolution is the House approving of the transfer process, and setting up rules for the Judiciary Committee phase.  The Judiciary Committee (HJC) then shifts to official Impeachment Hearings, prior to articles of impeachment being assembled.

• The HJC Ranking member (Doug Collins) shall have subpoena power subject to approval by the HJC Chair, Jerry Nadler.
• The HJC ranking member shall have the ability to request witness testimony, subject to approval by the HJC Chair, Jerry Nadler.
• The HJC will allow participation by President Trump’s counsel.

Within the rules, the existence of judicial enforcement authority -punishment for refusing to provide documents and witnesses by subpoena- is assumed.  Based on the construction of this resolution, and with Judge Howell’s court decision still standing, this presumption by the House appears structurally solid.

Here’s the full pdf of the rules:

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“The resolution provides rules for the format of open hearings in the House Intelligence Committee, including staff-led questioning of witnesses, and it authorizes the public release of deposition transcripts.

“The evidence we have already collected paints the picture of a President who abused his power by using multiple levers of government to press a foreign country to interfere in the 2020 election. Following in the footsteps of previous impeachment inquiries, the next phase will move from closed depositions to open hearings where the American people will learn firsthand about the President’s misconduct.”  (LINK)

Lawfare lawyers Barry Berke and Norm Eisen, leading participants in the construction of the impeachment rules, October 29, 2019,  entering the SCIF with Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler

Note: Rep. Carolyn Maloney, has replaced Elijah Cummings as the Acting Chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform.

Very nice trick here by the Lawfare advisory and rules committee that is handling the construct of the “Official House Inquiry” on impeachment.  It is such a good trick it has everyone crossed-up and confused.  Likely, that is by design.

On Thursday of this week Speaker Pelosi is bringing to the floor a resolution to affirm her previous declaration of an “Official House Inquiry”.  Mrs. Pelosi is very purposefully and carefully telling reporters this is not a “House resolution on impeachment”.  Read the wording carefully:

(LINK)

Speaker Pelosi is holding a vote, a resolution, to affirm her previous declaration of a House “inquiry”.  The resolution is currently being written by Lawfare. Pelosi is not delivering a House “Resolution on Impeachment” for a vote, because if she did hold a vote on an impeachment resolution, the minority and the Executive branch would gain rights therein.

This is a House vote to show support for Pelosi’s previous unilateral decree.   Right now the rules committee is adding language to the resolution that will provide additional one-sided support for a completely partisan process: “and for other purposes”.

Note in this video, Pelosi is careful to say “this is not an impeachment resolution”:

Additionally, notice that like Pelosi, Chairman Schiff is careful not to use the words “impeachment investigation”, but rather says “impeachment inquiry”:

So instead of having a House vote to authorize an impeachment investigation, with subsequent rights for the minority; they are having a House vote to affirm the “impeachment inquiry” with an entirely different set of House rules that do not include rights for the minority.

Nice trick huh?

On Thursday there will be a House vote to authorize:

…”ongoing investigations as part of the existing House of Representatives inquiry into whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its Constitutional power to impeach Donald John Trump, President of the United States of America, and for other purposes.”  (link)

And that House vote will include rules to further facilitate the one-sided, official impeachment inquiry, process therein.

Here’s where it gets interesting.

“And for Other Purposes” – The Thursday vote will likely have a rule process to conjoin the House Judiciary Committee (HJC) with the House “official impeachment inquiry”.

Why now?  Because the HJC just won a legal ruling from DC Judge Beryl Howell granting the Judiciary Committee formal impeachment authority.   {Go Deep}

Lawfare is hoping that through this Thursday vote scheme they will be able to twist the legal process into providing their House inquiry judicial enforcement authority, or punishment possible for the executive not complying with a House committee subpoena.

Pelosi, Schiff and Nadler are hoping to achieve this by bringing in the House Judiciary Committee and the judicial enforcement authority they were just granted by Judge Howell.  They are also in a big rush to do this; hence the Thursday vote.  The rush is because the DOJ has filed a motion for stay, as they appeal the Judge Howell ruling.

Remember, the Lawfare intent is to pierce the constitutional firewall that creates a distinct separation of powers; and the Legislative branch is trying to force documents from the Executive branch, overriding executive privilege. This is a constitutional issue. This level of impeachment intent is why judicial enforcement authority (the full house authorization to grant weight to legal subpoena power) becomes much more important.

Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler and Lawfare are attempting to create “judicial enforcement authority” without having an actual and constitutional vote to authorize an official “impeachment investigation”.   That’s what this Thursday House resolution is all about.

The Thursday House resolution is intended to authorize and validate the pre-existing Pelosi “impeachment inquiry”, and then expand the authority within the rules to create the impression of a full House impeachment investigation; without actually having a House  “impeachment investigation vote”…. because that would open-up rights to the minority and rights to the executive.

Of course, as previously stated, none of this would be possible if it were not for the complicit support of the entire national media. Pelosi’s impeachment scheme requires a compliant media to support her construct. So far, they have.

UPDATE: In the DC court the DOJ has filed a motion to stay the Judge Howell ruling as they appeal the decision.  The stay motion appears pretty solid on three of the four corner arguments.

The weakest aspect to the motion is the legal framework around “judicial enforcement authority.”  In part because the impeachment precedent is thin; and in part because the Judiciary Committee angle is about gaining evidence underneath the Mueller report – not the House Ukraine investigation.

Here’s the motion for stay:

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If Judge Howell doesn’t grant the stay pending appeal, the DOJ would have to look for an emergency injunction.  In the interim, Pelosi, Schiff and Nadler are looking to exploit the Howell decision that accepted, some would say ‘created‘, the existence of a formal House impeachment proceeding despite the non-existence of an authorizing vote.

In essence, Lawfare is trying to exploit a decision -quickly- that put the cart (impeachment) before the horse (vote); and leverage that judicial ruling as a back-door to grant full judicial enforcement authority over the House impeachment inquiry.

The optics therein is what the sham vote is intended to present.  As if the full House voted to allow the committee’s go gain judicial enforcement authority and change the committee request letters into actual and enforceable subpoenas.

I hope that helps make sense of it all.  Right now it feels like CTH is up against the entire DC Lawfare process, in explaining what is going on; and what are the motives and intents behind all of these moves….

Our united job is to STAND UP and explain this complex non-constitutional process to our friends, family and neighbors.