Nadler And Pelosi Announce Moves Toward Impeachment Proceedings

By Aliza Worthington — July 26, 2019

Congress will be in recess, but some members of the House of Representatives will continue to work. Most members will go home to their districts, but we learned in Rep. Jerry Nadler's press conference this afternoon that the Judiciary Committee's work will continue into the August recess. They're asking the courts for access to the grand jury information in the Mueller Report, and to force Don McGahn to comply with their subpoenas.

Why, you may ask? Drumroll, please...

They need the information in order to decide whether or not to file Articles of Impeachment against Trump.

This is, shall we say, of some significance. In concert with that, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held a press conference right before Rep. Nadler's, in which her language about impeachment also seemed to have subtly changed, even if her official stance did not. Mind you, her official stance has always been that they will impeach if they have the strongest possible case, and it was never off the table. Despite people who think they had the strongest possible case long ago, she has clearly (after Mueller's testimony this week) released her caucus to advocate for it, and today she even sounded like she was encouraging it. Speaker Pelosi said that the more members sign on to it, the more leverage she has to move forward with it.

That sounds like, "Release the hounds!" to me...

Charlie Savage joined Chris Jansing to discuss the press conferences:

Yes, what this is today they are asking the judge to let them see the secret grand jury evidence that Robert Mueller gathered. But beyond that, they're doing it in a way that implicates the first thing you were talking about: the question of whether Democrats will open an impeachment inquiry, they are trying to move past that question. They're saying, "Essentially we are already doing that." The court filings say, "We need this information because we are considering whether to file Article of Impeachment against the president, and we are using our full Article One impeachment investigative authority for that." And so, we've had this debate you referred to, in which House Democrats have been trying to do whether they want to have a formal vote to say we are officially opening an impeachment inquiry. Some people are worried about whether moderate, Blue Dog Democrats who won in purple districts a year ago would be put in danger for doing a vote like that. And what Chairman Nadler is doing here is saying, "Maybe those magic words don't mean anything. We can just go ahead and have an investigation related to impeachment by those terms without a vote on the House floor." And this is the most explicit time or ways they said that. It is an escalation of the rhetoric in trying to thread this political needle.

Again, this is big. It looks like the Judiciary Committee will move forward on impeachment proceedings before there's even a vote on the floor of the House.

NEW:@RepRaskin tells me Judiciary Committee will likely undertake impeachment hearings on its own.

“I’m convinced articles of impeachment will originate from the Judiciary Committee. The question is just when.”

My argument for this course of action:https://t.co/PxKYgC1pxD

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) July 26, 2019

@RepJerryNadler just announced that the Judiciary Committee is formally inquiring whether to recommend Articles of Impeachment. If it so informs the court today, it will unlock the Rule 6(e) door to all the secret grand jury material. That would be HUGE. https://t.co/PCWd83MEE3

— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) July 26, 2019

So, the Judiciary Committee will work through the recess in the courts. The rest of the House will go home to their constituents. Now, their constituents must make sure they let their Congresspeople know they're in favor of impeachment. One phone call, people. One phone call.

BRING. IT. ON.