CONGRESS
Pelosi’s Trump impeachment approach is coming together
Analysis: The president’s recent actions have helped Pelosi start to resolve the conflicts in her caucus — and unite them around a deliberate, relentless investigative approach.
“It’s not about pressure. It’s about patriotism,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Thursday of Congress’ attempts to get the full unredacted Mueller report released.Win McNamee
May 9, 2019, 5:03 PM ET
By Jonathan Allen
WASHINGTON — Speaker Nancy Pelosi portrayed herself Thursday as the protector of the Constitution, Congress and the country as House Democrats braced for war with President Donald Trump over his refusal to give them full access to special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, related documents and witnesses.
“This is very methodical, it’s very Constitution-based, it’s very law-based, it’s very factually based,” Pelosi said about House plans to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt for withholding documents. “It’s not about pressure. It’s about patriotism.”
Trump and his Republican allies say Democrats are simply dressing up a partisan witch hunt in the haberdashery of constitutional principle. They express confidence that recent polls showing a lack of support for impeachment, particularly among independents, is evidence that the public agrees with them and that Democrats will only hurt themselves — and help the president — if they continue on their current course.
“If we’re already seeing that before any of the investigations begin, then moving toward impeachment will more than likely result in a backlash for Democrats,” said one source close to the White House who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak on behalf of Trump.
While the courts are likely to decide the scope of what Democrats can get their hands on, the fight over the terms of the public debate — partisan or constitutional — figures to have a significant impact on the political outcome, especially during a period in which the Trump’s assertion of executive privilege limits the House’s ability to produce any new evidence.
In any period in which one party controls the House and the other controls the White House, the impeachment process is inherently both a matter of solemn constitutional duty and partisan politics.
All of that helps explain why it’s Pelosi’s defense of another institution — the Democratic caucus — that is at the core of her approach to the investigations and possible impeachment of Trump. Though the cable talk shows and digital press have been full of speculation about what Pelosi wants — or believes — about impeachment, people who know her well say that she is driven in large measure by keeping solidarity in her ranks.
“She’s moving at a pace that all the spectrum of her caucus can tolerate right now,” said former Maryland Rep. Donna Edwards. “She is very protective of the institution and the prerogatives of the institution, and you can see that, that she wants to insulate this from the politics and the electoral politics, and that is in keeping with her protection of the unity of the caucus.”
In other words, when Trump’s liberal critics put the impeachment cart before the process horse, moderate Democrats are quick to jump out. But when the question is framed as one of pursuing legitimate oversight of the executive branch, following investigations where they lead and maintaining the Constitution’s balance of power, it is much easier for her to keep her troops in line.
In that way, Trump’s actions have helped Pelosi start to resolve the conflicts in her caucus.
“There’s a deep concern, particularly among institutionalists, about the balance of power,” said a senior aide to one moderate Democrat who noted that the administration’s refusal to comply with subpoenas has angered some lawmakers who had been reluctant to escalate the fight.
That is, the pace is speeding up even for most Democrats who have been reluctant to go down a path that could lead to impeachment.
Pelosi has said she believes Trump is “goading” Democrats into impeaching him, and many Republicans and Democrats in Washington believe that a House impeachment followed by a Senate acquittal would be a political gift to Trump and House Republicans.
There’s even some concern among House Democrats that the very act of impeaching Trump would hand over power by giving the savvy Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., control of the timetable and process for trying the case with the 2020 election approaching.
And yet Trump’s blanket defiance of Congress on the Mueller report and a range of other issues, from declining to provide his tax returns to declaring a national emergency so he could shift funds to build a border wall, has put Democrats in the position of acquiescing or escalating.
“The president and the attorney general have left the Congress, and the House in particular, not many choices,” Edwards said.
For the moment, Democrats may have been handed some ammunition by an unlikely source as they try to make their case that Trump is tampering with the Constitution’s checks and balances. It was reported Wednesday that the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Sen. Richard Burr, Republican of North Carolina, issued a subpoena to Donald Trump Jr. after the panel was unable to secure a second round of testimony from him in its Russia probe.
While Trump Jr. is not an administration official — and the subpoena was actually sent in mid-April —the off-pitch sound from the GOP’s previously harmonious message was discordant enough to trigger a response from Burr’s fellow Republicans.
“The Mueller report cleared @DonaldJTrumpJr and he’s already spent 27 hours testifying before Congress,” GOP Sen. Thom Tillis, Burr’s home-state colleague, wrote in a tweet. “Dems have made it clear this is all about politics. It’s time to move on & start focusing on issues that matter to Americans.”
To win, Pelosi has to convince Americans that the fight is more about checks and balances than partisan politics — and that they should side with House Democrats over the Republican in the White House.
A divided caucus undermines that message. A united one helps to sell it.
Jonathan Allen
Jonathan Allen is a Washington-based national political reporter for NBC News who focuses on the presidency.
© 2019 NBC UNIVERSAL
And now this: another absurd twist, help to whitewash the counter punches? A legitimization of a novel political dirty trick?
May 10, 2019, 8:27 AM ET
By Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Carrie Dann
WASHINGTON — In 2016, the Trump campaign gladly accepted Russia’s help to defeat Hillary Clinton.
And heading into the 2020 race, Rudy Giuliani is headed to Ukraine to push the country’s president to pursue an investigation into Joe Biden’s son, the New York Times writes.
“We’re not meddling in an election, we’re meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do,” Giuliani told the Times about his upcoming visit to Ukraine.
“There’s nothing illegal about it,” he added. “Somebody could say it’s improper. And this isn’t foreign policy — I’m asking them to do an investigation that they’re doing already and that other people are telling them to stop. And I’m going to give them reasons why they shouldn’t stop it because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.”
How isn’t this the biggest political story in America right now — Team Trump wants the help from another foreign government to dig up dirt on an opponent?
If you don’t think this is a five-alarm scandal — and instead you’re shrugging your shoulders at this story — then we’ve truly gone down the power-hungry rabbit hole, where anything and everything is fair game.
!!! !!!
The New York Times
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White House Asked McGahn to Declare Trump Never Obstructed Justice
President Trump believed that Donald F. McGahn II, his former White House counsel, showed disloyalty by telling investigators about Mr. Trump’s attempts to maintain control over the Russia investigation.CreditAndrew Harnik/Associated Press
By Michael S. Schmidt
May 10, 2019
WASHINGTON — White House officials asked at least twice in the past month for the key witness against President Trump in the Mueller report, Donald F. McGahn II, to say publicly that he never believed the president obstructed justice, according to two people briefed on the requests.
Mr. Trump asked White House officials to make the request to Mr. McGahn, who was the president’s first White House counsel, one of the people said. Mr. McGahn declined. His reluctance angered the president, who believed that Mr. McGahn showed disloyalty by telling investigators for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, about Mr. Trump’s attempts to maintain control over the Russia investigation.
The White House made one of the requests to Mr. McGahn’s lawyer, William A. Burck, before the Mueller report was released publicly but after the Justice Department gave a copy to Mr. Trump’s lawyers in the preceding days. Reading the report, the president’s lawyers saw that Mr. Mueller left out that Mr. McGahn had told investigators that he believed the president never obstructed justice. Mr. Burck had told them months earlier about his client’s belief on the matter and that he had shared it with investigators.
Mr. McGahn initially entertained the White House request. “We did not perceive it as any kind of threat or something sinister,” Mr. Burck said in a statement. “It was a request, professionally and cordially made.” A White House spokeswoman did not respond to a message seeking comment.
But after the report was released, detailing the range of actions Mr. Trump took to try to impede the inquiry, Mr. McGahn decided to pass on putting out a statement supportive of the president. The report also revealed that Mr. Trump told aides he believed Mr. McGahn had leaked to the news media to make himself look good.
See Which Witnesses the Mueller Report Relied on Most A partially redacted report of the special counsel’s findings released on April 18 cited interviews with 43 individuals at least 10 times.
The episodes show the lengths the White House has gone around the release of the Mueller report to push back on the notion that Mr. Trump obstructed justice. House Democrats have used the report to open investigations into whether Mr. Trump abused his position to insulate himself from the Russia inquiry.
The revelations came as the Democrats on Friday increased their pressure on the White House on other fronts. The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Richard E. Neal, subpoenaed the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service for six years of Mr. Trump’s personal and business tax returns. Democrats are also pursuing testimony from Mr. Mueller but have not agreed on a date, Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, told reporters.
In the days after the report was released, White House officials asked Mr. McGahn again to put out a statement as Mr. Trump fumed about his disclosures but Mr. McGahn rebuffed the second request as well.
White House officials believed that Mr. McGahn publicly asserting his belief would calm the president and help the administration push back on the episodes that Mr. Mueller detailed in the obstruction section of the report, said one of the people. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations involving the White House.
Around the time Mr. McGahn declined the second request, the president’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani began publicly attacking his credibility, saying that Mr. McGahn had a bad memory. “It can’t be taken at face value,” Mr. Giuliani said of Mr. McGahn’s account one day after the Mueller report was released. “It could be the product of an inaccurate recollection or could be the product of something else.”
The White House learned in August that Mr. McGahn had told Mr. Mueller’s investigators that he believed the president had not obstructed justice, according to one of the people. After a New York Times article revealed that Mr. McGahn had spoken to investigators for at least 30 hours, Mr. Burck tried to reassure the White House by explaining that his client told Mr. Mueller that he never believed Mr. Trump had committed an obstruction offense.
Mr. McGahn’s cooperation with Mr. Mueller played a crucial role in allowing the special counsel’s investigators to paint a picture in their report of a president determined to use his power atop the executive branch to protect himself from the Russia investigation.
Read the Mueller Report: Searchable Document and Index The findings from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, are now available to the public. The redacted report details his two-year investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
The president’s lawyers are particularly concerned about two episodes that Mr. McGahn detailed to prosecutors. In one, Mr. Trump asked him to fire the special counsel but backed off after Mr. McGahn refused. After that episode was revealed, the president asked Mr. McGahn to create a White House document falsely rebutting his account. Mr. McGahn declined to go along but told Mr. Mueller about the encounters.
It makes no difference legally whether Mr. McGahn believes Mr. Trump obstructed justice. That is a determination made by prosecutors, not witnesses. But politically, such a statement could have been a powerful argument for Mr. Trump, who faces scrutiny from House Democrats about whether he obstructed justice and abused his power.
Mr. Mueller declined to make a determination about whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice, saying that because a sitting president cannot be indicted, it was unfair to accuse him of committing a crime. Attorney General William P. Barr stepped in and decided with his deputy, Rod J. Rosenstein, to clear Mr. Trump of wrongdoing.
But because Mr. Mueller made no determination — and wrote a damning report that showed repeated efforts by Mr. Trump to interfere with his inquiry — questions about whether the president obstructed justice have lingered as Democrats have sought to gain momentum in their investigation of Mr. Trump.
The Democrat-led House Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed Mr. McGahn to testify. But White House advisers have indicated they will try to block him from appearing before lawmakers, and Mr. Trump has said that there is no reason for Mr. McGahn to speak with congressional investigators because he had cooperated so extensively with Mr. Mueller’s team.
“I’ve had him testifying already for 30 hours and it’s really — so I don’t think I can let him and then tell everybody else you can’t,” Mr. Trump said last week in an interview with Fox News. “Especially him, because he was a counsel, so they’ve testified for many hours, all of them, many, many, many people. I can’t say, ‘Well, one can and the others can’t.’ I would say it’s done.”
Mr. McGahn left the White House last year but is still entangled with the president on matters related to the Mueller investigation. The White House instructed Mr. McGahn on Tuesday to not turn over documents he had to the House in response to a subpoena. Mr. McGahn followed the White House’s advice and is now waiting to see whether Democrats will hold him in contempt.
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© 2019 The New York Times