The House resolution confirms the developments that will almost definitely end in the president’s impeachment.
On Thursday, five weeks after Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump, the House adopted a resolution confirming that inquiry. The timing is somewhat confusing: The House has had success in several recent court cases, and there’s nothing in the Constitution or in House rules that requires it to adopt a resolution to conduct an impeachment inquiry. So why now?
So far, the impeachment investigation has developed in mostly the same way as previous congressional investigations and impeachments. The recent depositions and testimonies taken by the Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight Committees are similar to the discovery process done by the Senate’s Select Committee on Watergate. It, too, was an investigative arm; a formal impeachment inquiry wasn’t initiated in the House until a year later, in February 1974.
The depositions and evidence fundamental to Richard Nixon’s impeachment occurred through Congress’s normal oversight authority and capacity. It also eroded both his political support on Capitol Hill and his public approval, which plummeted 41 points between January of 1973 and January of 1974.
So for now, given the House’s support from the courts and ability to obtain critical information in the Ukraine scandal, you would think that passing a resolution is unnecessary, or at least bad timing.
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But the opposite is true: In cases like this, formalizing procedures establishes an unmistakable political and institutional intent. It is unlike political theater — press hits, speeches, storming a “sensitive compartmented information facility” at the Capitol — which politicians use to sway public opinion.
Procedures are where the rubber meets the road. Formalizing the impeachment investigation represents a significant shift from preliminary and largely behind-the-scenes work to much more public legal and political steps toward impeachment. It puts a spotlight on the elephant in the room: The political decisions have been made, and the House will impeach President Trump.
The resolution accomplishes several things. First, it undercuts the White House’s legal defense against impeachment. President Trump’s lawyers argued that House subpoenas lacked a “legitimate legislative purpose” because the House had not adopted a formal impeachment resolution. That defense runs counter to more than 90 years of legal interpretation establishing Congress’s authority to seek and obtain information based only on a “potential legislative purpose” with no predictable end. The president’s defense also carries major separation of powers implications, potentially limiting the scope of Congress’s oversight authority.
Nevertheless, the House resolution undercuts the president’s thin legal arguments and will expedite other House cases against the president, which — with the Ways and Means and Financial Services Committees included in the impeachment authorization — will clearly continue to be pursued.
Second, the resolution undermines the president’s political defense. Republicans argued the House’s inquiry is a “sham process.” Absent an impeachment resolution, they say, the investigation lacked transparency, due process rights for the president and the validity of a House vote.
They had a point. Until now, the impeachment inquiry had essentially been based on Speaker Pelosi’s statement at a Sept. 24 news conference. The distinction between the House and the speaker should not be overlooked. The speaker has lots of power, but it is not unilateral. It rests upon the support of the House majority. Without a majority, a speaker’s procedural authority amounts to very little, and that includes impeachment inquiries.
Passing a resolution throws the weight of the House of Representatives behind Speaker Pelosi’s words, clarifying the House’s purpose for judges who have, until now, been forced to interpret whether the House investigations amounted to an impeachment inquiry. It also undercuts Republicans’ process arguments by outlining investigation and hearing procedures and the rights afforded to the president throughout the proceedings.
But perhaps most important, the resolution details the specific roles of committees and members. The impeachment inquiry had raised a lot of questions. Why, for example, was Adam Schiff’s Intelligence Committee spearheading depositions and testimonies from State Department officials and not Eliot Engel’s Foreign Affairs Committee, whose jurisdiction covers diplomatic matters? Given the Intelligence Committee’s central role, would it report articles of impeachment rather than Judiciary, which has historically retained that power?
Politically, the answers appear obvious, but this overlooks the very real tensions behind the scenes. Several committees and chairmen can, and surely have, made legitimate arguments to be central participants in the impeachment inquiry. This resolution, like any offensive strategy, clearly delineates the role various powerful members and committees will play. A dysfunctional team running aimlessly around a field is doomed to lose. The House is no different.
Undercutting the president’s legal and political defenses is an important, but ultimately tangential, purpose of the House’s impeachment resolution. The resolution is most significant to the House Democrats’ game plan.
It anticipates a shift from scouting opponents to devising ways to beat them. It instructs House committee chairmen about their strategy and the scope of their inquiries. It provides a road map for how processes leading to articles of impeachment will unfold. And it ominously signals the first formal procedures that could, and almost definitely will, end in the president’s impeachment.
Joshua C. Huder
My take: I will have to see the Republican held Senate actually impeach to believe it because they will have to overcome their beehive cult like stubbornness to achieve it.
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