Let Me Be Clear

Time for A Special Select Committee to investigate late breaking issues the GOP Senate may ignore. Time for Hyde to c’mon down and discuss his role in undermining the operation of US laws and our government. There is no question this is necessary and proper.

— Monkey🙈🙉🙊 (@Monkey26697239) January 15, 2020

I'm down with this. I want to stop the increasingly imperial Presidency. Congress has ceded too much, but how to reverse tbat? The courts should be moving more expeditiously to back Congressional subpoenas and general oversight, but the message coming from the Supremes is to "leave the President alone."

If of interest, I did some thinking & writing a/b executive privilege & impeachment @lawfareblog examining:
1) Senate witnesses & exec priv https://t.co/10hA0Bw6Tu
2)obstruction charge and OLC's args https://t.co/46oOTefFkl
3)whether House should have sued https://t.co/jAZMFlNW0p

— Jonathan David Shaub (@jshaub) January 15, 2020

Let me take something from that post to underline my point:

The latter course is the one on which the White House has largely relied to date and reflects what I have called the executive branch’s development of a “prophylactic executive privilege” over the past few decades. (I describe that history in depth in a draft paper on executive privilege.) If the Senate permits the executive branch to rely on this privilege in the context of an impeachment trial, as the House largely did, it would represent an extraordinary consignment of constitutional authority from the legislature to the executive.

It's the last sentence there I'm interested in.  Would the Senate make "an extraordinary consignment of constitutional authority from the legislature to the executive"?  You should pardon the expression, but:  sure.  In a New York minute.

That article linked in the tweet is, by the way, an excellent analysis of the issues raised by impeachment.  But we aren't dealing with lawyers and judges or even highly suspect Supreme Court Justices (I haven't thought much of them since Bush v. Gore; their actions responding to cases regarding Congressional subpoenas is even more suspicious, IMHO.  The Burger court showed more fidelity to the law than the Roberts court has.); we are dealing with politicians.  Which allows me to post my favorite quote from Nancy Pelosi today:

Speaker Pelosi starts her remarks by noting she accepts Rep Doug Collins' apology "for his ridiculous remarks" (saying Democrats love terrorists)

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 15, 2020

In the meantime we have Susan Collins complaining about witnesses, and John Kennedy complaining about press restrictions:

Not all Republican senators are backing the new restrictions on reporters that have been imposed for the Trump impeachment trial. https://t.co/GCbZ1lhF6O @politico by @marianne_levine & @buressev

— Darren Samuelsohn (@dsamuelsohn) January 15, 2020

Whether that is all for public consumption, or reflects real interest in some sense of fairness and doing the people's business (not Trump's), remains to be seen.  Color me skeptical, however.  They want this to be a somber and sober moment, sort of like the opening session of the new British Parliament:

Well here they are. The House impeachment managers en route from the House to the Senate. pic.twitter.com/j6BlmkeIxQ

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) January 15, 2020

But I honestly think the British are more committed to their unwritten constitution than we are to our written one.  Will we get anything more than empty pageantry that is a pale shadow of the Monarch awaiting the pleasure of the Black Rod, who gets the door to the House of Commons slammed in his/her face as part of the ritual.  An impeachment trial will be less ceremonious than the bringing of the articles to the Senate, and bound by far less tradition.

The White House, in other words, has reason to think this will be shortly over: 

The White House is predicting a short impeachment trial. On a call with reporters just now, a senior official estimated it won't take longer than two weeks. “When you have an easy case, you don’t need a long time to present it," the official said.

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) January 15, 2020

That still takes it very close to, if not into, the SOTU.  And that allows me to post my second-favorite Pelosi quote of the day:

“He’s been impeached forever. They cannot erase that.”

Pelosi, understanding Trump’s psychology, really twisting that rhetorical knife.

— Eli Stokols (@EliStokols) January 15, 2020

Until November, that may be all we get.  Well, that and Trump spewing all over the ceremonial speech about "PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!" or "TOTAL EXONERATION!" 

Either way, this won't do him any good; and he won't do any good with it.