I hadn't read the letter when I wrote this, but I have skimmed it now. "Bananas" is putting it mildly. But that's not the subject of this post.Wow. This letter is bananas. A barely-lawyered temper tantrum. A middle finger to Congress and its oversight responsibilities.— Gregg Nunziata (@greggnunziata) October 8, 2019
No Member of Congress should accept it, no matter his or her view on the behavior of Pelosi, Schiff, or Trump.
Things are bad. Things will get worse. https://t.co/AesJ6cGHrl
If the House goes to court on every single instance of refusal, this will drag out until next November. However, most of the public reaction to impeachment is based not in a deep understanding of what has happened in Ukraine the last 3 years (this did not all happen in July), but on the more general appearance of a lawless Administration. If Trump is doing this to fight in the court of public opinion, it's the wrong strategy.
This 8 page tirade is not challenging that appearance at all. It barely seems the lawyers have any control here (which is why Trump was poured out on his tax returns for NY State. It's probably also why the 2nd Circuit wants arguments ASAP. The courts don't like being abused. These legal claims border on the frivolous, and that has been true before. Those chickens come home to roost eventually.). Trump may think he's smarter than his lawyers, but if a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client, what is a client who represents himself?
Speaker Pelosi responds to Trump’s letter:— Heather Caygle (@heatherscope) October 9, 2019
“The White House letter is only the latest attempt to cover up his betrayal of our democracy, and to insist that the President is above the law,” she says in a statement, noting any stonewalling will add to Dems obstruction argument
As Pelosi said she told Trump two weeks ago when he brought up the Ukraine call during a phone chat with the speaker: “Mr. President, you’re in my wheelhouse now.”— Heather Caygle (@heatherscope) October 9, 2019
Trump is in Pelosi's wheelhouse in ways he doesn't even understand yet. He is playing this out on the Pelosi's field, under Pelosi's rules. But he thinks he's still fighting Robert Mueller with the AG backing his play and the OLC rules protecting him from any real investigation. Barr can't hide and misrepresent the House investigation, and blocking it in plain sight, rather than in private as he did to Mueller (where do you think the 10 counts of obstruction came from?), is not the winner it was for him then.
Meanwhile, this letter is beginning to sound curiously like the argument the DOJ made in court today:
We can't tell you what the problems are, because we'll have new problems with whatever solutions you offer. The trial court today gave the DOJ the benefit of the doubt, and noted this position was "not helpful." If they keep it up, it begins to be an argument not made in good faith.After WH says it won’t cooperate with House Dems bc of ‘flaws’ in proceedings, officials refuse to say what it would take for them to comply. “We don’t want to speculate on what would happen in various hypothetical situations” … “Not going to try to provide particular redlines”.— Kevin Liptak (@Kevinliptakcnn) October 8, 2019
Last time DOJ did that, they were threatened with sanctions and came perilously close to contempt. Trump was pushing hard to get his citizenship question on the census, even after the Supreme Court refused to order it, and the trial courts in Maryland and New York were going after the DOJ so hard several lawyers withdrew from one of the cases, or tried to. When the POTUS is screwing the pooch so badly even the DOJ's lawyers don't want to be in court for him, you know it's bad. And if the DOJ keeps going to court to spout whatever dribble spews from Trump's fingers, they're going to be more than spanked. They're gonna be in a world of hurt, because when the DOJ starts making arguments in bad faith, the courts are gonna start bouncing Trump like a basketball.
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