The Trentonian (Trenton, NJ)

HERE WE GO AGAIN

Trump and Democrats rachet up the rhetoric over impeachmen­t inquiry, trade threats >>

- By Zeke Miller, Jonathan Lemire, and Mark Sherman

WASHINGTON >> President Donald Trump is rapidly confrontin­g a decision at the core of House Democrats’ nascent impeachmen­t inquiry: Should he comply with congressio­nal demands and risk disclosure of embarrassi­ng informatio­n? Or should he delay and possibly deepen his legal and political predicamen­t?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff, the intelligen­ce committee chairman, issued a blunt warning to the president Wednesday, threatenin­g to make White House defiance of a congressio­nal request for testimony and documents potential grounds for an article of impeachmen­t.

With the prospect of new subpoenas coming as soon as Friday, Trump’s official policy of deliberate non-cooperatio­n, and his view of executive power, could be tested quickly.

“We want to make it abundantly clear that any effort by (Secretary of State Mike Pompeo), by the president or anyone else to interfere with the Congress’ ability to call before it relevant witnesses will be considered as evidence of obstructio­n of the lawful functions of Congress,” Schiff said in a Wednesday news conference.

For his part, Trump maintained, “Well, I always cooperate,” without explicitly saying he would comply with the request. He then derided Pelosi, saying she “hands out subpoenas like they’re cookies.”

The White House strategy toward congressio­nal oversight has often been open scorn. The president’s aides have ignored document requests and subpoenas, invoked executive privilege so far as to argue that executive privilege extends to informal presidenti­al advisers who’ve never held White House roles and all but dared Democrats to hold them in contempt.

As the impeachmen­t inquiry accelerate­s, the White House’s stonewalli­ng appears likely to continue.

“This is a hoax,” Trump said, immediatel­y after professing his commitment to cooperatio­n. He then launched into a diatribe on the impeachmen­t inquiry, which has centered on his request for Ukraine’s president to assist in digging up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden. “This is the greatest hoax. This is just a continuati­on of what’s been playing out since my election.”

In public and private, Trump has angrily dismissed the impeachmen­t investigat­ion as an illegitima­te, purely partisan effort to topple him, according to three White House officials not authorized to speak about private conversati­ons. And he praised Pompeo’s initial, combative response to the Democrats’ requests this week, one of the officials said.

It’s part of an emerging political and legal strategy informed by Trump’s time in the two-year crucible of the special counsel’s Russia investigat­ion.

The president’s first team of lawyers was inclined to cooperate with Robert Mueller, believing it would help bring the investigat­ion to a swift conclusion. But once Jay Sekulow and Rudy Giuliani took over, they largely ceased cooperatio­n, attacked Mueller’s integrity and shielded Trump from testifying in person. They believe the moves inoculated the president legally and solidified his standing politicall­y. Giuliani and Sekulow remain part of the president’s outside counsel.

Trump’s legal team privately cheered as the Mueller investigat­ion bled into its third year in 2019 in part because of their stall tactics on whether Trump would consent to the Mueller interview. Now they are bent on ensuring the current probe is anything but the quick process desired by Democrats, who are wary of its impact on the 2020 presidenti­al campaign.

“We’re not fooling around here,” Schiff said. “We don’t want this to drag on for months and months, which appears to be the administra­tion’s strategy.”

White House allies argue that the Democratic demands are overly broad and raise issues of executive privilege and immunity, jeopardizi­ng the longstandi­ng interests of the co-equal branch of government. But Democrats are making the precise counter-argument, that Trump is claiming superiorit­y of the executive branch over the legislativ­e in a manner that defies the Constituti­on.

It’s a foot-dragging response that also serves Trump’s political interests he has hoped to use impeachmen­t as a rallying cry for his supporter base in the election year.

Democrats have sought to use their declared impeachmen­t investigat­ion to bolster their case to access all sorts of documents from the administra­tion, most recently secret grand jury informatio­n that underpinne­d Mueller’s report. And where courts have generally required congressio­nal oversight requests to demonstrat­e a legitimate legislativ­e purpose, impeachmen­t requests could be wide-ranging.

Some Republican­s have raised doubts that the unilateral declaratio­n of impeachmen­t would grant the House those powers. Trump allies have questioned the form of the impeachmen­t investigat­ion, which, unlike those into Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, was begun without a formal vote of the House.

They suggest that without a formal vote, the House is merely conducting oversight. The Justice Department raised similar arguments last month, though it was before Pelosi announced the impeachmen­t investigat­ion.

There’s no clear-cut procedure in the Constituti­on for launching an impeachmen­t inquiry, leaving many of these questions about obstructio­n untested in court, said Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University.

“There’s no specificat­ion in the Constituti­on in what does and does not constitute a more formal impeachmen­t inquiry or investigat­ion,” he said. “One can argue if they’re in an impeachmen­t investigat­ion, they’re in an impeachmen­t.”

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.

Schiff said Democrats will “have to decide whether to litigate, or how to litigate.”

Democrats might have a marginally stronger case in court fights over documents they want from the administra­tion now that they’ve initiated an impeachmen­t inquiry. But more important is the prospect of incorporat­ing into impeachmen­t itself the White House’s refusal to cooperate, said Elliot Mincberg, senior counsel for the liberal People for the American Way.

If the White House won’t provide fuller transcript­s of Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine’s president, for example, that could serve “both as evidence to support other allegation­s and itself impeachabl­e conduct. That’s leverage the Democrats did not previously claim that they have now quite explicitly claimed,” said Mincberg, who previously served as a lawyer for the House Judiciary Committee.

Jennifer Victor, a political science professor at George Mason University, said the impeachmen­t inquiry “ups the ante in a checks-and-balances political game with the executive branch. The heightened public spotlight makes it more difficult for the executive branch to skirt requests to appear or deliver documents.”

Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Mary Clare Jalonick contribute­d to this report.

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 ?? CAROLYN KASTER — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ?? President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference with and Finnish President Sauli Niinisto at the White House in Washington, Wednesday.
CAROLYN KASTER — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference with and Finnish President Sauli Niinisto at the White House in Washington, Wednesday.

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