The articles of impeachment decision rationale

On Dec. 2, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi was on a trip to a climate change conference in Spain, she held a conference call with about a dozen of the most vulnerable Democrats who delivered her the House.

Their message to Pelosi: Keep impeachment focused only on the Ukraine scandal. The obvious but unsaid implication was she should exclude a standalone article of impeachment against President Donald Trump based on the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, which described numerous instances of potential obstruction of justice by Trump.

  Politico

I hope she's not sorry.

Two days later, Pelosi called an emergency meeting in her second-floor Capitol office with her senior leadership team, where it quickly became clear her deputies were divided.

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler of New York made the case for an obstruction of justice impeachment article based on the Mueller report. Backing him up were Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, the second- and third-ranking House Democrats, according to multiple sources.

I would have gone with them.

Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff of California opposed the move, as did House lawyers overseeing legal cases against the Trump administration, according to Democratic insiders. And their resistance aligned with Pelosi’s long-held private belief that the caucus should take a narrower focus.

Okay, they're the lawyers. But I hope they're not sorry.

Discussion drafts on the articles began to circulate within Democratic leadership and the decision was finalized over this past weekend after Pelosi spoke repeatedly to all the key players. On Tuesday, Pelosi and key chairs made it official.

[...]

The show of unity emerged after an internal Democratic struggle over one of the core dilemmas facing the caucus all year — how to make use of Mueller’s complex investigation.

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Mueller’s probe gets only a glancing reference in the articles of impeachment themselves. But Democrats — including Pelosi — have repeatedly leaned on the foundation Mueller built to help justify calls to remove Trump from office.

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Democrats are still connecting Mueller to impeachment — at least paying lip service to his investigation, even if they've largely kept it out of the articles themselves. Democrats intend to expound on Mueller’s evidence in a lengthy report that will accompany the articles of impeachment when they’re voted out of the Judiciary Committee later this week.

Will that permit them to bring it up in the trial?

That report will spell out what Democrats allege is a “pattern” of impeachable conduct by Trump, beginning with his efforts to obstruct Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. It will then suggest Trump committed an impeachable abuse of power when he pressured Ukraine to investigate his Democratic rivals ahead of the 2020 campaign.

Perhaps the most decisive reason for not including obstruction of justice in the articles lies with this fact:

Democrats have been locked in lengthy and successful court battles to obtain Mueller’s secret grand jury evidence, as well as to force some of his top witnesses to testify. But it’s not clear when those cases will be resolved.

One issue facing lawmakers and aides was that the pending litigation may have provided the Senate with a pretense to ignore a Mueller-focused article of impeachment altogether. Senate Republicans, some feared, would simply cite the ongoing court cases and drop the article altogether.

That seems a little lame to me. So what is lost if that happens?

Democrats eager to maintain political momentum declined to go to court to enforce subpoenas connected to the Ukraine investigation. In fact, they withdrew a subpoena for a top witness — former White House national security aide Charles Kupperman — when it appeared poised to drag the House into a lengthy court battle.

[...]

Most important, the Ukraine scandal occurred entirely during Trump's term in office — unlike several of the events captured in Mueller's report — and presented a far simpler narrative to lay out for the public.

Now THAT sounds like at least a logical reason.

There's no confusion about the actions of "Candidate Trump" vs. "President Trump." As Democrats see it, Trump and senior administration officials defied the will of Congress by holding up military aid to Ukraine; they jeopardized an American ally and helped Russian President Vladimir Putin; and they attempted to leverage multiple agencies to execute the scheme to force Ukrainian officials to announce an investigation into Joe Biden, the president's domestic political rival.

It was a clear, concise case, as far as Democrats were concerned.

[...]

“The focus is obviously on making the strongest case that everyone can understand, and one that will highlight the challenges that this president presents to our Constitution,” said Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), a Judiciary Committee member. “And abuse of power and obstruction of Congress is so clear, so easy for everyone to understand."

That was something former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti has stressed all along: juries need simple, clearcut cases. I'd think that would be a little less concerning when the jury is the Senate, but maybe they're thinking about the para-jury, the public.

But there's still another possible problem - or at least something for Republicans to cry foul about and perhaps file a complaint or suit over:

That focus at times cut against the message the House was sending to federal courts about whether Mueller’s evidence would be included in impeachment proceedings.

While Pelosi allies have been signaling for months they wouldn’t wait for the courts to render decisions before deciding whether to move forward with impeachment, House lawyers had been telling a series of federal judges that they needed quick rulings in order to factor Mueller’s evidence into impeachment, particularly the testimony of former White House counsel Don McGahn, who provided some of Mueller’s most damning evidence.

The McGahn and grand jury cases are both scheduled to be argued Jan. 3 before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, but any rulings there would almost certainly be taken to the Supreme Court.

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

UPDATE:

All the people who refuse to testify are accomplices in the destruction of this country.

UPDATE: Further explanation.