Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility
White House and Democrats Clash Over Rules for Impeachment
gvw_ap_news
By Associated Press
Published 6 years ago on
October 9, 2019

Share

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Constitution gives the House “the sole power of impeachment” — but it confers that authority without an instruction manual.
Now comes the battle royal over exactly what it means.

“You have designed and implemented your inquiry in a manner that violates fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process.” — White House counsel Pat Cipollone
In vowing to halt all cooperation with House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, the White House on Tuesday labeled the investigation “illegitimate” based on its own reading of the Constitution’s vague language.
In an eight-page letter, White House counsel Pat Cipollone pointed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s failure to call for an official vote to proceed with the inquiry as grounds to claim the process a farce.
“You have designed and implemented your inquiry in a manner that violates fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process,” Cipollone wrote.
But Douglas Letter, a lawyer for the House Judiciary Committee, told a federal judge Tuesday that it’s clear the House “sets its own rules” on how the impeachment process will play out.
The White House document lacked much in the way of legal arguments, seemingly citing cable TV news appearances as often as case law. And legal experts cast doubt upon its effectiveness.
“I think the goal of this letter is to further inflame the president’s supporters and attempt to delegitimize the process in the eyes of his supporters,” said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas.
Courts have been historically hesitant to step in as referee for congressional oversight and impeachment. In 1993, the Supreme Court held that impeachment was an issue for the Congress and not the courts.

The Court Unanimously Rejected the Challenge

In that case, Walter Nixon, a federal district judge who was removed from office, sought to be reinstated and argued that the full Senate, instead of a committee that was established to hear testimony and collect evidence, should have heard the evidence against him.
The court unanimously rejected the challenge, finding impeachment is a function of the legislature that the court had no authority over.
As for the current challenge to impeachment, Vladeck said the White House letter “does not strike me as an effort to provide sober legal analysis.”
Gregg Nunziata, a Philadelphia attorney who previously served as general counsel and policy adviser to Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, said the White House’s letter did not appear to be written in a “traditional good-faith back and forth between the legislative and executive branches.”
He called it a “direct assault on the very legitimacy of Congress’ oversight power.”
“The Founders very deliberately chose to put the impeachment power in a political branch rather the Supreme Court,” Nunziata told The Associated Press. “They wanted this to be a political process and it is.”
G. Pearson Cross, a political science professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, said the letter appeared to act as nothing more than an accelerant on a smoldering fire.
“It’s a response that seems to welcome a constitutional crisis rather than defusing one or pointing toward some strategy that would deescalate the situation,” Cross said.

It Is Unclear if Democrats Would Wade Into a Lengthy Legal Fight

After two weeks of a listless and unfocused response to the impeachment probe, the White House letter amounted to a declaration of war.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who is leading the Ukraine probe, has said Democrats will “have to decide whether to litigate, or how to litigate.”
It’s a strategy that risks further provoking Democrats in the impeachment probe, setting up court challenges and the potential for lawmakers to draw up an article of impeachment accusing President Donald Trump of obstructing their investigations.
Democrats have said that if the White House does not provide the information, they could write an article of impeachment on obstruction of justice.
It is unclear if Democrats would wade into a lengthy legal fight with the administration over documents and testimony or if they would just move straight to considering articles of impeachment.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who is leading the Ukraine probe, has said Democrats will “have to decide whether to litigate, or how to litigate.”
But they don’t want the fight to drag on for months, as he said the Trump administration seems to want to do.
A federal judge heard arguments Tuesday on whether the House had undertaken a formal impeachment inquiry despite not having taken an official vote and whether it can be characterized, under the law, as a “judicial proceeding.”
The distinction matters because while grand jury testimony is ordinarily secret, one exception authorizes a judge to disclose it in connection with a judicial proceeding. House Democrats are seeking grand jury testimony from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation as they conduct the impeachment inquiry.

DON'T MISS

What Are Fresno Real Estate Experts Predicting for 2025 and Beyond?

DON'T MISS

First California EV Mandates Hit Automakers This Year. Most Are Not Even Close

DON'T MISS

World’s Largest Almond Processor Will Shutter Sacramento Plant. 600 Workers Impacted

DON'T MISS

Trump Eyes Major Funding Cuts for California, Including All Public Universities

DON'T MISS

Farming Regulation Costs Rise 1,300% Since 2006: Cal Poly

DON'T MISS

Southern California Air Regulators Weigh a Plan to Phase Out Gas Furnaces and Water Heaters

DON'T MISS

US Supreme Court Allows DOGE Broad Access to Social Security Data

DON'T MISS

Doctors Were Preparing to Remove Their Organs. Then They Woke Up.

DON'T MISS

Abrego Garcia Is Returned to US From El Salvador

DON'T MISS

Proud Boys Convicted in Jan. 6 Attack Sue Government on Claims of ‘Political Persecution’

DON'T MISS

FDA’s AI Assistant ‘Elsa’ Fails Its First Day on the Job

DON'T MISS

Documentary Series Goes Inside Trump’s Bubble

UP NEXT

FDA’s AI Assistant ‘Elsa’ Fails Its First Day on the Job

UP NEXT

8 Ways Musk and Trump Could Inflict Pain on Each Other

UP NEXT

D-Day Veterans Return to Normandy to Mark 81st Anniversary of Landings

UP NEXT

Lambda Legal, a Nonprofit Supporting LGBTQ+ Rights, Exceeded Fundraising Goal by $105M

UP NEXT

Trump Threatens Musk’s Government Deals as Feud Explodes Over Tax-Cut Bill

UP NEXT

Trump Amplifies Outlandish Robot Biden Conspiracy Theory

UP NEXT

American Doctors Are Moving to Canada To Escape the Trump Administration

UP NEXT

Loretta Swit, Emmy-winner Who Played Houlihan on Pioneering TV Series ‘M.A.S.H.,’ Has Died at 87

UP NEXT

1 in 4 US Children Have Parents With Substance Use Disorder, Study Finds

UP NEXT

Dozens Sickened in Expanding Salmonella Outbreak Linked to Recalled Cucumbers

Southern California Air Regulators Weigh a Plan to Phase Out Gas Furnaces and Water Heaters

3 hours ago

US Supreme Court Allows DOGE Broad Access to Social Security Data

3 hours ago

Doctors Were Preparing to Remove Their Organs. Then They Woke Up.

4 hours ago

Abrego Garcia Is Returned to US From El Salvador

4 hours ago

Proud Boys Convicted in Jan. 6 Attack Sue Government on Claims of ‘Political Persecution’

4 hours ago

FDA’s AI Assistant ‘Elsa’ Fails Its First Day on the Job

4 hours ago

Documentary Series Goes Inside Trump’s Bubble

4 hours ago

Tulare County Gang Member Convicted of Trying to a Murder Police Officer

5 hours ago

Newsom Promises Funding to Jump-Start ‘Science of Reading’

5 hours ago

Feds Indict SoCal Hospice CEO for Medicare Fraud in Fresno and Kern Counties

5 hours ago

World’s Largest Almond Processor Will Shutter Sacramento Plant. 600 Workers Impacted

The world’s largest almond processor, Blue Diamond Growers, says it will close its Sacramento processing plant this year The almond co...

2 hours ago

2 hours ago

World’s Largest Almond Processor Will Shutter Sacramento Plant. 600 Workers Impacted

3 hours ago

Trump Eyes Major Funding Cuts for California, Including All Public Universities

3 hours ago

Farming Regulation Costs Rise 1,300% Since 2006: Cal Poly

4 hours ago

Southern California Air Regulators Weigh a Plan to Phase Out Gas Furnaces and Water Heaters

4 hours ago

US Supreme Court Allows DOGE Broad Access to Social Security Data

5 hours ago

Doctors Were Preparing to Remove Their Organs. Then They Woke Up.

5 hours ago

Abrego Garcia Is Returned to US From El Salvador

5 hours ago

Proud Boys Convicted in Jan. 6 Attack Sue Government on Claims of ‘Political Persecution’

Help continue the work that gets you the news that matters most.

Search

Send this to a friend