Meanwhile, Back In The House...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats have gone silent as Trump has rampaged across the executive branch claiming heads, and it doesn't look like they're going to do much of anything heading into election season.

The change in posture is an acknowledgment, House Democrats say, that in a world where Senate Republicans are bear-hugging Trump, and the courts are declining to operate at the speed of the congressional calendar, there are very few options that a single chamber of Congress can pursue short of withholding funds for agencies like the Justice Department — particularly when impeachment is no longer in their election-year arsenal.
"There is nothing that Donald Trump can do that would cause [Senate Republicans] to convict him of high crimes and misdemeanors," said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who serves on the House Judiciary Committee. "So that has caused everybody in the House to take a deep breath and figure out what our next steps are."

"That leaves us legislative and political answers," Raskin added.

In other words, the end of the impeachment process has become the advent of a new, narrower focus on what Democrats say is a crucial theme revealed by their efforts: Trump's indifference to, or even encouragement of, foreign interference in the 2020 election. It's a throughline, they say, of Trump's behavior toward Russia, his treatment of Ukraine and his public comments on whether he would reject foreign help in future elections.

Now, rather than revive the smashmouth impeachment approach that they adopted throughout the fall and winter, Democrats say they intend to use their investigative weapons to highlight these election security themes and keep pressure on Republicans who chided Trump for his behavior in Ukraine but ultimately acquitted him for it.

"I would argue that impeachment actually served its purpose. It highlighted for people what we're dealing with here and what the stakes are," said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.). "I would say it set the table for people to take a good hard look at what I think impeachment helped to remind us of, what a threat that represents, and conveniently for us his behavior subsequently has only made our case for us."

Democrats are pondering whether to pass new election security measures, putting them in the Senate's court as the primary gets underway. And they're planning to drive a consistent election security message as the nation's focus shifts toward the November election.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced a March 10 intelligence community briefing for lawmakers, and she's slammed Trump for what she says is politicizing the intelligence community, in part by installing Richard Grenell, a loyalist ambassador, as the acting director of national intelligence. News reports that Russia is already interfering in the upcoming election have returned the issue to the fore.

Separately, Democrats on Friday dusted off their Trump oversight tools and took the first steps to confront the president's campaign of post-acquittal retribution. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) requested testimony from a slew of high-profile Justice Department officials about political interference in criminal cases — including four career prosecutors who quit the case of longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone earlier this month after the president intervened in his sentencing. 

Here's what's going to happen:  The House will pass another round of election security measures and the Senate will ignore them.  Jerry Nadler will subpoena Justice Department prosecutors involved in Trump crony cases and the White House will block testimony claiming executive privilege of people who have never worked in the actual White House.  Trump has basically fired everyone who testified in the impeachment hearings.  Nobody else will voluntarily come forward.  The courts will offer no relief.

Democrats will fret and do nothing.

They especially won't turn to inherent contempt of executive officers.

Maybe things will heat up after July and the Democratic nominee is official, but I doubt it.

And remember, the COVID-19 virus means all future bets are off.

Lowering The Barr, Con't

House Democrats are finally taking action against Attorney General William Barr and his reign of legal terror.  Well, sort of, anyway.

House Democrats are seeking interviews with the four career prosecutors who quit the case of Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of President Donald Trump, after Trump and Justice Department leaders intervened to demand a lighter jail sentence.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) requested the interviews in a Friday letter to Attorney General William Barr that also included broader demands for documents and testimony about allegations of political interference by Trump in the work of the Justice Department.

In the letter, Nadler seeks access to a long list of Justice Department officials who oversaw matters involving associates of the president — like former Trump campaign national security adviser Michael Flynn — or who were tapped by Barr to review cases Trump has openly criticized.

Among the officials Nadler is seeking to interview are John Durham, the U.S. attorney from Connecticut who was picked by Barr to review the origins of the FBI's probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election; Jeff Jensen, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, who Barr selected to review the case of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn; Robert Khuzami, the former New York-based prosecutor who oversaw the case against Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen; and Richard Donoghue, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, who Barr picked to review all matters related to the Ukraine scandal that led to Trump's impeachment in the House last year.

But the most notable names on the list are four Stone prosecutors: Aaron Zelinsky, Adam Jed, Michael Marando and Jonathan Kravis. Nadler's request for access to the career line prosecutors is an unusual step intended to circumvent the Justice Department's political leadership — and one that has been viewed with caution even by Trump critics.

It's the latest indication that House Democrats see career employees as crucial sources of information in an era in which Trump has directed his top political appointees to ignore House demands for information.

Nadler wants a response by March 13, and Barr himself is still scheduled to appear before the House on March 31.  Whether any of those will happen is anyone's guess, but don't expect to hear from any of the Stone prosecution team anytime soon, or anyone else on Nadler's extensive list.  Hell, even odds right now that Barr doesn't show up on the 31st either.

It's not like the House Democrats are going to do much, even if they could.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

The impeachment of Donald Trump is moving forward rapidly now, with House Democrats moving to bring two articles of impeachment against him by the end of the week.

House Democrats announced on Tuesday that they would move ahead this week with two articles of impeachment charging President Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, as they accused him of violating the Constitution by pressure Ukraine for help in the 2020 election.

Speaking from a wood-paneled reception room just off the floor of the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and leaders of six key committees said that Mr. Trump’s actions toward Ukraine, and his efforts to block Congress’s attempt to investigate, had left them no choice but to pursue one of the Constitution’s gravest remedies. The move will bring a sitting president to the brink of impeachment for only the fourth time in American history.

“Today, in service to our duty to the Constitution, and to our country, the House Committee on Judiciary is introducing two articles of impeachment charging the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, with committing high crimes and misdemeanors,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and the panel’s chairman. He stood before four American flags and a portrait of George Washington.

“Our president holds the ultimate public trust,” Mr. Nadler said. “When he betrays that trust and puts himself before country, he endangers the Constitution, he endangers our democracy, and he endangers our national security.” 

The announcement comes a day after Democrats summed up the central allegations in their impeachment case against Mr. Trump: that he pressured Ukraine to announce investigations into his political rivals while withholding as leverage a coveted White House meeting for its president and $391 million in critical security assistance. His actions, they argued in a lengthy hearing at the Judiciary Committee, had placed the president’s personal political interests above those of the country, threatening the integrity of the election and national security in the process.

After more than two months of investigating the Ukraine matter, and a year of confrontation between the Democratic House and Mr. Trump, the impeachment process is now likely to unfold quickly. The Judiciary Committee plans to promptly begin debating the articles as soon as Wednesday, and could vote by Thursday to recommend them to the full House of Representatives for final approval. If the House follows through as expected next week, Mr. Trump could stand trial in the Senate early in the new year.
The Judiciary Committee planned to publicly release text of the articles later on Tuesday. While individual lawmakers will be able to propose amendments to the articles during this week’s debate and potentially force a committee vote on additional charges, they are not expected to substantively change.

By this time next week, Donald Trump could be impeached.

History is being made.  What the results of that history will be, even I'm not sure.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

House Judiciary Democrats were putting in another Saturday session to begin drafting article of impeachment against Donald Trump, articles that we could see presented Monday by the committee and could see a full House vote in a matter of days.

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives met on Saturday to prepare for what could be the final week of their months-old impeachment inquiry that has imperiled Donald Trump’s presidency.

After emerging from an all-day closed door meeting, House Judiciary Committee Democratic lawmakers said they were still in the process of drafting formal charges, known as articles of impeachment, that the panel could recommend for a full House vote as early as Thursday. 

Representative Jamie Raskin told reporters on Saturday evening the committee had spent the day digesting information they received from the House Intelligence Committee and constitutional law scholars who testified before Congress on Wednesday. “So now we are in the process of putting the law and the facts together to begin to think about the next step,” he said. 

The lawmakers released a 55-page report on Saturday morning outlining what they see as the constitutional grounds on which articles of impeachment could be built.
In releasing the report, the panel’s Democratic chairman, Jerrold Nadler, said impeachment was the only way to hold the Republican president to account.

“President Trump abused his power, betrayed our national security, and corrupted our elections, all for personal gain,” Nadler said in a statement. “The Constitution details only one remedy for this misconduct: impeachment.” 

“Now we have the task of focusing on what the exact articles might be,” said Eric Swalwell, another Democratic lawmaker in the House Judiciary Committee, on his way out of Saturday’s meeting. 

The committee will hold a public hearing on Monday to consider evidence gathered in the inquiry.

House Republicans of course are screaming bloody murder.

Republicans have called for a full day of proceedings to examine their own evidence, including a 110-page report saying the inquiry had found no evidence of an impeachable offense. 

On Friday, the White House told Nadler it would not take part in the panel’s hearings and condemned the inquiry as “completely baseless.” Nadler, in turn, expressed his disappointment: “The American people deserve answers from President Trump.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in Congress, directed the committee to draw up the charges on Thursday after weeks of investigation into Trump’s request that Ukraine investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading contender for the Democratic nomination to face the president in the 2020 U.S. election.

The one thing everyone seems to agree on is that Pelosi has the votes for the articles.  It's not going to be a unanimous vote by Democrats, and zero Republicans will vote for them because they're all cowards, but she absolutely has the votes to pass them.

It's extremely likely by this time next week, Donald Trump will have been impeached and will be awaiting a Senate trial.  Unfortunately, that means Mitch McConnell can run a Senate trial however he wants, even if Chief Justice Roberts will be presiding.

That won't happen until January though, so we'll wee.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

Yesterday's House Judiciary impeachment hearing on the legal ramifications of impeachment was a national civics seminar, and a necessary one.

Three legal experts told U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate a political rival amounted to impeachable offenses, in a hearing that laid the groundwork for formal charges to be filed against the president.

Democrats on the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee said they may look beyond Trump’s relations with Ukraine as they draw up articles of impeachment, to include his earlier efforts to impede former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of his campaign’s relations with Russia

“The president’s alleged offenses represent a direct threat to the constitutional order,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler said.

The impeachment inquiry, launched in September, focuses on Trump’s request that Ukraine conduct investigations that could harm political rival Joe Biden, a leading contender for the Democratic 2020 presidential nomination.

The hearing on Wednesday was the committee’s first to examine whether Trump’s actions qualify as “high crimes and misdemeanors” punishable by impeachment under the U.S. Constitution.

Three law professors chosen by the Democrats made clear during the lengthy session that they believed Trump’s actions constituted impeachable offenses.

“If what we’re talking about is not impeachable, then nothing is impeachable,” said University of North Carolina law professor Michael Gerhardt.

Which is literally the point the GOP is trying to make.  Nothing is impeachable when Trump is concerned.  Nancy Pelosi is moving ahead anyway.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announced on Thursday she is asking the House Judiciary Committee to proceed with drafting articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, saying "the president leaves us no choice but to act."

“Sadly, but with confidence and humility, with allegiance to our founders and our heart full of love for America, today, I am asking our chairmen to proceed with articles of impeachment,” Pelosi said in a brief televised statement from the Capitol, speaking directly to the American people.

The facts of Trump's alleged wrongdoing involving Ukraine, she said, "are uncontested.”

"The president abused his power for his own personal, political benefit at the expense of our national security by withholding military aid and crucial Oval Office meeting in exchange for an announcement of an investigation into his political rival,” Pelosi said, adding that his actions "seriously violated the Constitution."

"Our democracy is what's at stake," Pelosi continued. "The president leaves us no choice but to act because he is trying to corrupt, once again, the election for his own benefit."

So, what's next?  The evidence gets laid out Monday by the House Judiciary.

House impeachment investigators will present evidence against President Donald Trump to the Judiciary Committee on Monday, a key step before Democrats finalize articles of impeachment.

The Judiciary Committee’s Thursday announcement of its next hearing comes after Speaker Nancy Pelosi directed the panel and other investigators to draft articles of impeachment, a historic milestone that suggests the House could vote to impeach Trump before the end of the year.

It also comes a day after the Judiciary Committee held its first impeachment hearing, in which constitutional law scholars argued Trump’s dealings with Ukraine meet the definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors” as laid out in the Constitution.

Democrats previewed three potential articles of impeachment at Wednesday’s hearing: abuse of power, obstruction of Congress and obstruction of justice.

The impeachment inquiry centers on Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine’s leaders to investigate his political rivals, with Democrats arguing that Trump has obstructed their probe by refusing to provide documents and blocking important witnesses. Democrats say the evidence they have compiled shows Trump used military aid to Ukraine and a White House meeting with the country’s president as leverage.

A House Judiciary Committee vote on articles of impeachment could come as soon as the end of next week, bringing a vote before the full House on the following week.

We're about to enter history here, folks.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

Back to the business at hand, and that business is the House Intelligence Committee's report on Ukraine out today and expected to be approved tomorrow as the action now shifts from Schiff and Intel to Jerry Nadler and the House Judiciary.

Members of the House Intelligence Committee will begin reviewing a report Monday on the panel's investigation of President Donald Trump's efforts to press Ukraine to investigate his Democratic adversaries, a crucial step in the House's fast-moving impeachment inquiry.

Lawmakers on the panel will get a 24-hour review period, according to internal guidance sent to committee members and obtained by POLITICO. On Tuesday, the panel is expected to approve the findings — likely on a party-line vote — teeing it up for consideration by the Judiciary Committee, which is in turn expected to draft and consider articles of impeachment in the coming weeks.

Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff had indicated in a letter to colleagues earlier this week that a report would be coming "soon" from his committee but had not provided a specific timeframe.

Schiff had also indicated that his committee was still open to receiving new witnesses or testimony as it began to draft the report, but it’s unclear if any new information has become available since lawmakers departed for a one-week Thanksgiving recess.

The Ukraine report is expected to make up the core of Democrats’ likely articles of impeachment against Trump. Lawmakers leading the inquiry have suggested Trump could face an article alleging abuse of power for withholding military aid and a White House meeting from Ukraine while Trump and his allies pressured the country’s new president to investigate Democrats.

The House has been moving quickly to investigate Trump since Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the impeachment inquiry on Sept. 24. Democratic leaders, including Pelosi, have refused to assign a public end date to their investigation but many lawmakers have said privately they hope to wrap up by the end of the year.

The House Judiciary Committee is slated to hold its first impeachment hearing on Wednesday, with a panel of constitutional experts explaining exactly what constitutes an impeachable offense, including defining the nebulous “high crime and misdemeanor” term specified in the Constitution.

It's Nadler and the Judiciary who will decide on exactly what the articles of impeachment against Donald Trump will be, and Republicans on the Judiciary will be there every step of the way to derail the process, their first move being to call Adam Schiff himself as a witness.

It's gonna get hairy this week, I guarantee.

Turkey Week: The Reach To Impeach

Impeachment proceedings the House Intelligence Committee are done, but that only means it's time for the main event in the House Judiciary Committee to begin next Wednesday.

The first House Judiciary Committee hearing, scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 4, will consist of legal experts on the impeachment process. The announcement of the hearing comes after the House Intelligence Committee held fact-finding hearings about Trump’s alleged plot to withhold millions in aid to Ukraine until the country announced an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, whom Trump saw as a chief political rival.

“At base, the President has a choice to make: he can take this opportunity to be represented in the impeachment hearings, or he can stop complaining about the process,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, in a statement. “I hope that he chooses to participate in the inquiry, directly or through counsel, as other Presidents have done before him.”

Nadler wrote in his letter to Trump that he was “hopeful that you and your counsel will opt to participate in the Committee’s hearing, consistent with the rules of decorum and with the solemn nature of the work before us.”

House investigators haven’t heard from some of the figures at the center of the alleged plot, including acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. Earlier this week, a federal judge ruled that former White House counsel Don McGahn had to testify before Congress, a decision which could impact other congressional subpoenas.

But the Trump administration has appealed, and a Democratic aide said that if they simply waited for the judicial process to play out, the administration would be successful in interfering in the congressional investigation.

We'll see what happens next week.

Last Call For The Reach To Impeach, Con't

On one hand, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is furious at the way former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski treated Tuesday's House Judiciary hearing as a joke and as a national platform for his US Senate ambitions.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told a group of lawmakers Wednesday evening that Corey Lewandowski should have been held in contempt “right then and there” when he talked over members, dodged their questions and promoted his Senate campaign from a House hearing. 

In a small huddle with lawmakers from across the caucus, Pelosi (D-Calif.) complained that no witness should be able to treat members of Congress like President Trump’s former campaign manager did during a Tuesday hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, according to three people familiar with the exchange. 

“I would have held him in contempt right then and there,” she said.

Several lawmakers in the room took her remarks as a dig at House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who chose not to hold Lewandowski in contempt for his defiant behavior on Tuesday.

Technically, staff would have had to draft up a contempt resolution to vote on in committee. And Democrats thought it would be better to keep the focus on Trump.

Others, however, were outraged and feel like the committee looked weak for not responding. The panel, however, could choose to move forward with contempt at a later day.

Pelosi spokeswoman Ashley Etienne confirmed the exchange, saying in a statement that “in a meeting today, a member commented on the level of disrespect that Lewandowski displayed at the hearing for the Committee and Congress’s authority to uncover the truth.”

“Speaker Pelosi agreed that his behavior was beyond the pale and contemptible,” she said. “The Speaker went on to say that he could have been held in contempt right then and there.”

On the other hand, she also is furious at House Judiciary Democrats for wanting to impeach.

In a closed-door meeting last week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi stunned lawmakers and aides with a swipe at Democratic staff on the House Judiciary Committee. 

Pelosi criticized the panel’s handling of impeachment in harsh terms, complaining committee aides have advanced the push for ousting President Donald Trump far beyond where the House Democratic Caucus stands. Democrats simply don’t have the votes on the floor to impeach Trump, Pelosi said. 

“And you can feel free to leak this,” Pelosi added, according to multiple people in the room. Pelosi’s office declined to comment on the meeting. 

It was the latest sign of the widening schism between Pelosi and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, two longtime allies who are increasingly in conflict over where to guide the party at one of its most critical moments. 

Both Pelosi and Nadler, who have served in the House together for more than 25 years, insist their relationship remains strong. But their rift over impeachment is getting harder and harder to paper over amid Democrats’ flailing messaging on the topic and a growing divide in the caucus. 

Whether the two veteran lawmakers can get on the same page will determine whether the party avoids a rupture that threatens its chances of holding on to the House majority and beating Trump in 2020. 

“I think the speaker wants to be careful of all the different members of the caucus,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a vocal impeachment advocate. “She doesn’t always want to use the word ‘impeachment’ but believe me, she signed off on every piece of what has been put forward.”

Pelosi's going to need far more than just the 55-60%  of House Dems currently favoring impeachment, and it's pretty clear that enough of them don't want to proceed...and never will.

So, Pelosi can be mad at Jerry Nadler all she wants to be, but if she keeps walking down the middle of the road on this issue, she's going to get run over by a truck eventually.

On the gripping hand, Lewandowski did all but admit to obstruction of justice once Democratic party lawyers at the hearing got a hold of his ass.

As it turns out, though, the morning session with all the committee members having their say was just the warm-up act. In its vote last week, the committee had passed a rule allowing staff counsel to pose questions for half an hour in these public impeachment hearings. Barry Berke, a lawyer for the Democratic members, then took over the hearing and it was like night and day. 

Most of the press has focused on the moment when Berke cornered Lewandowski by showing that he lied repeatedly on television about this incident and his interactions with the Mueller team. After much hemming and hawing his explanation was "I have no obligation to be honest with the media because they are just as dishonest as everybody else." (Who else? )

But Berke teased out another colorful detail that has passed unnoticed. Despite the White House order that Lewandowski shouldn't speak of any conversations with the president other than those specifically referenced in the Mueller report, it turns out that he has written a couple of books one of which is called "Let Trump Be Trump: The Inside Story of His Rise to the Presidency." It features many conversations with the president, which the White House apparently had no objections to publishing. One of the anecdotes has Trump suggesting to Lewandowski that he might join the administration at the level of Jared Kushner to run the Russia 2016 election interference investigation. 

As Berke went on with his relentless fusillade of questions, Lewandowski became increasingly distressed. He had repeatedly claimed that he had never read the Mueller report. As Berke's 30 minutes were almost done, he asked Lewandowski whether he took the report lightly, reminding him that he had been autographing copies of the report just last week, while joking that he couldn't sign every page where his name appeared because there were too many of them. Lewandowski became upset and said:

I'm outraged at your characterization of my statements. Never have I said that, never have I called into question the validity of the Mueller Report or alluded to the fact that I wanted Russia to interfere ... 

Every time one of the principal figures confirms the Mueller report, another impeachment count gets its wings. 

Whereas Lewandowski had been cocky and derisive toward the members in the early session, he was crumbling after 30 minutes of solid questioning designed to show him as the weasel he is. It was the most effective line of questioning we've seen in a hearing in ages and it shows how important it is that Democrats allow staff lawyers to interrogate the witnesses rather than having members of Congress get cut off after five minutes, only to move on to another questioner from the other side and a completely different subject.

The Dems are actu ally getting somewhere, and Nadler is leading the way.

Pelosi sure as hell is making it hard for him though.

Last Call For The Reach To Impeach, Con't

The pace at which House Democrats have come out in public favor of opening impeachment inquiries into Donald Trump has quickened since Mueller's testimony before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees last month, and today the number of House Democrats in favor of beginning the road to impeachment eclipsed a majority of Nancy Pelosi's caucus.

The impeachment dam has broken.

More than half of House Democrats say they would vote to launch impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump, a crucial threshold that backers said will require Speaker Nancy Pelosi to reconsider her steadfast opposition.

Though Pelosi has given no indication that even a significant majority of House Democrats embracing impeachment proceedings would shift her view, supporters of an inquiry argue that crossing the halfway mark among the caucus is a symbolic boost that could shift the political dynamic.

“The president’s repeated abuses have brought American democracy to a perilous crossroads," said Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who announced his support on Tuesday. "Following the guidance of the Constitution — which I have sworn to uphold — is the only way to achieve justice."

The number of House Democrats who support impeachment proceedings passed the halfway mark — 118 out of 235 voting members now support the effort — on Thursday when Rep. Ted Deutch of Florida announced his support. Deutch was also the 23rd Democratic lawmaker to support impeachment proceedings in the days after former special counsel Robert Mueller testified to Congress, affirming publicly his damning evidence suggesting Trump attempted to obstruct justice.

Mueller's appearance reignited a push for impeachment proceedings among Democrats, who had been slowly gathering momentum for the effort since April. Though his testimony was at times halting, Mueller confirmed to lawmaker his report’s findings that Trump’s 2016 campaign welcomed Russian assistance and that Trump repeatedly attempted to undermine the investigation into Russia’s hacking and propaganda operation.

Perhaps more significant than the number of Democrats backing an inquiry are the identities of the members themselves. The latest additions include Reps. Mike Levin of California, Jennifer Wexton of Virginia and Jason Crow of Colorado, three freshmen who flipped Republican-held districts in November. Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, a member of Pelosi's leadership team, added her name to the list on Friday.

Engel, a veteran lawmaker from New York City, is also one of six committee chiefs tasked by Pelosi with investigating Trump's conduct. He's the second of those committee leaders, along with Rep. Maxine Waters of California, to publicly demand an impeachment inquiry. Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler has privately advocated for one as well.

So again, it's not just safe blue seats with 30-point margins calling for moving ahead with impeachment, it's swing-district Dems and committee chairs joining in.  And more Dems are joining all the time now.

And in his op-ed at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel today, Rep.Ted Deutch argued that impeachment process is already underway.

In the past, a resolution directing the Judiciary Committee to consider impeachment was needed to grant the committee additional subpoena authority and financial resources. That was the official start of an impeachment inquiry.

But times have changed. In 2015, Republican leaders gave committee chairs broad subpoena powers — powers that Chairman Nadler retains today.

No additional step is required. No magic words need to be uttered on the House floor. No vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry is necessary.

The Judiciary Committee officially started its investigation into the abuse of power by President Trump on March 4, 2019. The stated purpose was to consider all constitutional remedies for presidential misconduct, including impeachment. In every meaningful way, our investigation is an impeachment inquiry. The Judiciary Committee already has the power to refer articles of impeachment to the whole House.

The Trump Administration has taken unprecedented and unconstitutional actions to ignore congressional subpoenas and pressure witnesses not to appear. President Trump has turned the White House into a black box. The Justice Department fabricated a theory of blanket immunity and distorted claims of executive privilege. The Administration wants to silence the witnesses to the President’s obstruction.

But the American people deserve to hear from former White House Counsel Don McGahn, under oath, about when the President ordered him to fire Mueller. And from Corey Lewandowski about when he was asked to narrow the scope of the investigation to protect the President. And from former Attorney General Jeff Sessions about President Trump’s pressure campaign to take back control of the investigation.

If the suggestion that we are already in the midst of an impeachment inquiry sounds farfetched, look to last week’s court filings by the House counsel. To break the administration’s stonewalling, the House lawyers explained that the Constitution gives the House “a constitutional power of the utmost gravity—recommendation of articles of impeachment.” Since Department of Justice policies won’t allow the prosecution of a sitting President, only the House of Representatives can ensure that the President is not above the law.

As we told the court, we already have the power. We don’t need a vote. We need President Trump to stop obstructing.

For better or worse, the impeachment train is leaving the station, and picking up steam.

Last Call For The Reach To Impeach, Con't

House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler has finally had enough, and is going forward with impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump, among other things.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said Friday that negotiations with former White House counsel Don McGahn over an outstanding subpoena for his testimony, but if the outstanding issues are not resolved soon, the committee plans to go to court to seek enforcement of the subpoena early next week.

Nadler told reporters at the Capitol that the committee would also be filing an application for the grand jury material underlying former special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

"The Department of Justice policies will not allow prosecution of a siting president," Nadler said. "The House is the only institution that can now hold President Trump accountable for these actions. To do so, the House must have access to all the relevant facts."

He added, "We will continue to seek testimony from key fact witnesses," and he added that "our work will continue into the August recess."

McGahn, who was prominently featured in the Mueller report, told the special counsel's team during hours of interviews that the president had ordered him to fire Mueller, and he refused. He has already defied a subpoena by the House panel, declining to testify when the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel claimed executive privilege.

Asked about the growing calls among the Democratic caucus to file articles of impeachment for Mr. Trump, Nadler did not rule out the possibility.

"We may decide to recommend articles of impeachment at some point. We may not," he said. Several of Nadler's colleagues referred to their next step in their inquiry as an "impeachment investigation" into the administration.

This is the Pelosi plan: get the information necessary to impeach Donald Trump into the hands of House Democrats.  Whether or not SCOTUS will agree, or whether or not this will be tied up in the courts until a Trump second term, we don't know.

But the dice have been rolled.  This path, by the way, is exactly what Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent recommended this morning.

Fortunately, there is an answer to this problem: The House Judiciary Committee can launch an impeachment inquiry independently, without any vote by the full House.

In an interview, Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, suggested to me that it’s only a matter of time until the committee formally considers drafting articles of impeachment on its own.

“Somebody has to write articles of impeachment to focus this investigative and analytical process,” Raskin told me. “If not the Judiciary Committee, who is going to do it? This is our job.”

Raskin suggested that this is where the process is inevitably heading already.

“The Constitution leaves it up to Congress how to structure impeachment proceedings,” Raskin told me. “There are many different ways to get there. It can arise from floor action. It can arise within the Judiciary Committee itself.”

“I’m convinced that articles of impeachment are going to originate from the House Judiciary Committee,” Raskin said. “The question is just when.”

The timeline on the inquiry part of impeachment has been answered, and that is now.

No wonder then that Trump is now specifically calling for investigations into President Obama and Hillary Clinton.

President Trump on Friday lashed out at Democrats over their ongoing investigations into his administration, suggesting there should instead be probes into former President Obama's book deal and other activities under his predecessor.

"They want to investigate, they want to go fishing and I watched Bob Mueller and they have nothing," Trump said of Democrats during an Oval Office gathering to announce an agreement with Guatemala.

"It’s a disgrace," he continued. "We want to find out what happened the last Democrat president. Let’s look into Obama the way they’ve looked into me. From day one they’ve looked into everything we’ve done."

"They could look into the book deal that President Obama made. Let’s subpoena all of his records," Trump continued. "Let’s subpoena all of the records having to do with Hillary Clinton and all of the nonsense that went on with Clinton and her foundation and everything else."

It's about damned time, Democrats.  Trump is terrified and is already lashing out in response to Democrats being serious.  He will start putting you in jail in order to save himself if you don't stop him...