Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
I'm sorry, but some apparently need to hear this in VERY simple terms:
no witness, whether just asked to appear or subpoenaed, still within reach of Trump's maniacal threats, is ever going to appear to testify before Congress UNLESS they can be physically grabbed by the scruff of the neck, cuffed if necessary and their asses dragged into the hearing room where the first thing the will be told is "If you don't testify, you don't go home. We have a cell reserved fo you."
Anything short of the above is simply checking the boxes so we can say we tried and that IS worthwhile. I sincerely hope I am wrong, but I believe we will be voting on several Artticles of Impeachment based largely on "adverse inferences".
61 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
someone's gotta bring it!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/07/federal-judge-takes-sledgehammer-trumps-stonewalling/
where it has this (author worked in the Clinton administration as a U.S. Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General) -
I.e., there is an expectation that this dam is about to burst and not drag out.... and I expect that once it does burst, it will form the framework for future arguments across the board for attempting to gain documents.
where it has this (author worked in the Clinton administration as a U.S. Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General) -
A federal judge takes a sledgehammer to Trump’s stonewalling
By
Harry Litman
Contributing columnist
Oct. 7, 2019 at 2:20 p.m. EDT
/snip
Marrero began the opinion by calling the president’s claim “extraordinary.” Things went steeply downhill for Trump from there. He wrote that Trump was asserting a constitutional shield from judicial process that was “virtually limitless,” a notion of “unqualified and boundless . . . presidential immunity that stands at direct odds with the framers’ constitutional plan and the Supreme Court’s precedents on executive immunity.” More: The president’s position was “repugnant to the nation’s governmental structure and constitutional values.” At its core, the court wrote, the argument reduces to the “very notion that the Founders rejected at the inception of the Republic.” And all that in just the first eight pages of the opinion, which continues on to demonstrate, using Supreme Court case law and basic political theory and history, the fundamental arrogance and lawlessness of Trump’s argument. Trump likely anticipated the ruling, and maybe even welcomed the opportunity to move the case to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, thereby eating up more time. The legal battle isn’t over yet. But this skirmish was a total rout for the president, and that matters for several reasons.
First, there are similar pending actions involving the administration’s general strategy of filing tenuous or meritless arguments to resist lawful testimony or producing documents. You can be sure that the courts in those actions will carefully read Judge Marrero’s opinion here — which paves the way toward dismissive and incensed rejections of other outlandish arguments (e.g., the administration’s insistence that former White House counsel Donald McGahn and former communications director Hope Hicks are protected by absolute immunity from even showing up in Congress).
Second, the quick work of the court indicates a judicial recognition of the urgency of resolving the administration’s far-fetched claims. It’s hard to see the court of appeals sitting on its hands for months after the lower court has made such a quick handoff.
But, most important, by far, is that the scathing language of the opinion bolsters the argument the House is developing for its second impeachment count, based on Trump’s attempted stonewalling of the House’s investigation. It is a major shot in the arm for that theory that the judicial branch has weighed in saying that Trump’s legal strategy is brazen and bankrupt. That strategy has stalled matters for a few months, but it’s beginning to come home to roost.
By
Harry Litman
Contributing columnist
Oct. 7, 2019 at 2:20 p.m. EDT
/snip
Marrero began the opinion by calling the president’s claim “extraordinary.” Things went steeply downhill for Trump from there. He wrote that Trump was asserting a constitutional shield from judicial process that was “virtually limitless,” a notion of “unqualified and boundless . . . presidential immunity that stands at direct odds with the framers’ constitutional plan and the Supreme Court’s precedents on executive immunity.” More: The president’s position was “repugnant to the nation’s governmental structure and constitutional values.” At its core, the court wrote, the argument reduces to the “very notion that the Founders rejected at the inception of the Republic.” And all that in just the first eight pages of the opinion, which continues on to demonstrate, using Supreme Court case law and basic political theory and history, the fundamental arrogance and lawlessness of Trump’s argument. Trump likely anticipated the ruling, and maybe even welcomed the opportunity to move the case to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, thereby eating up more time. The legal battle isn’t over yet. But this skirmish was a total rout for the president, and that matters for several reasons.
First, there are similar pending actions involving the administration’s general strategy of filing tenuous or meritless arguments to resist lawful testimony or producing documents. You can be sure that the courts in those actions will carefully read Judge Marrero’s opinion here — which paves the way toward dismissive and incensed rejections of other outlandish arguments (e.g., the administration’s insistence that former White House counsel Donald McGahn and former communications director Hope Hicks are protected by absolute immunity from even showing up in Congress).
Second, the quick work of the court indicates a judicial recognition of the urgency of resolving the administration’s far-fetched claims. It’s hard to see the court of appeals sitting on its hands for months after the lower court has made such a quick handoff.
But, most important, by far, is that the scathing language of the opinion bolsters the argument the House is developing for its second impeachment count, based on Trump’s attempted stonewalling of the House’s investigation. It is a major shot in the arm for that theory that the judicial branch has weighed in saying that Trump’s legal strategy is brazen and bankrupt. That strategy has stalled matters for a few months, but it’s beginning to come home to roost.
I.e., there is an expectation that this dam is about to burst and not drag out.... and I expect that once it does burst, it will form the framework for future arguments across the board for attempting to gain documents.
