No recess for the Intel Committee

"Liddle" Adam Schiff is not playing around.

Members of the House Intelligence Committee are planning to return to Washington next week despite a scheduled congressional recess, and may hold a hearing next Friday, as Democrats move swiftly in their impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

  Politico

Good. There's no time to waste. (They can thank Nancy for losing their recess.)

Three members of the intelligence panel told POLITICO that they expect the committee to issue subpoenas for documents and witnesses as they work to corroborate the whistleblower’s claims.

[...]

“We want to know who in the White House knew what and when,” said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a senior member of the intelligence panel.

They better be ready to put some teeth into those subpoenas: hold people in contempt, arrest them.

Democrats are also considering whether to include 'obstruction of Congress' as part of potential articles of impeachment.

Well, yes!

The whistleblower, meanwhile, is awaiting legal guidance from the office of the director of national intelligence regarding what he or she is permitted to tell lawmakers.

The man who took the complaint to the White House and the DOJ instead of the Intel Committee as he was required to do by law. I hope his legal team has better sense.

The full House will not return until Oct. 15, which has some Democrats worried they could squander public interest and momentum in the Ukraine investigation — in a similar way that Democratic investigators lost steam amid their slow-moving investigations stemming from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

Not an unreasonable concern.

But Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries stressed that House investigators, particularly within the intelligence panel, would be “very active” over the next two weeks.

[...]

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) told members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus during a closed-door meeting this week that the impeachment process, which his panel oversees, is not likely to be a sprawling one that includes a dozen articles of impeachment.

Nadler’s key message to the group? “It’s going to happen sooner than people think,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who attended the Thursday meeting.

[...]

Lawmakers and aides emphasized that it is too early to discuss potential articles of impeachment and when such measures could come to the House floor. Much of the timing, they say, will depend on when — and if — they are able to secure further evidence from the whistleblower and the inspector general.

As the House moves ahead with its impeachment inquiry, top Democrats have increasingly discussed the possibility of pursuing “obstruction of Congress” as part of potential articles of impeachment, including during a closed-door meeting on Monday with committee chairs.

[...]

Obstruction of Congress articles would be a catchall rebuke of the president, lawmakers say, over his refusal to comply with dozens of congressional oversight requests over the past year.

“Obstruction of Congress is a unifying pattern of misconduct that we’ve seen from the beginning of this Congress,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a Judiciary Committee member. “So I would be shocked if it doesn’t find its way into whatever our final work product is.”

Go for it.

The Intelligence Committee is in the spotlight as it pursues the Ukraine investigation, but members of the Judiciary Committee and lawmakers on some of the other panels investigating Trump are privately jockeying to ensure they have a say in how the impeachment inquiry culminates.

We're talking about impeaching a man who puts himself above the country by people who are seemingly doing the same thing. If the Democrats don't fuck this up, it will be a miracle.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.