A first step to impeachment

Wrong.  It is NOT over.  Not by a long shot.  Ninety-five is a pretty big number.  This was only the first vote.

Mueller testifies on the 24th, just to mention one thing.

Does he really believe it's over?  Or is he just saying what he wants to be true?

The House of Representatives killed an attempt to impeach Donald Trump on Wednesday, with 137 Democrats joining Republicans to table a vote on articles of impeachment brought by the congressman Al Green of Texas.

Ninety-five Democrats voted to advance the impeachment resolution, which blasted Trump for bringing “disgrace” on the presidency by issuing racist tweets last Sunday aimed at four congresswomen of color.

[...]

Many Democrats said they agreed with the sentiment, but the caucus followed the lead of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, who said on Wednesday morning that multiple investigations into the president, his associates and their activities should play out before impeachment could be considered.

  The Guardian

Which could take a very long time, and every minute that bigot is in office, the whole world suffers.

Green, who represents the southern Houston suburbs, has made two prior attempts to get impeachment rolling on the House floor.

“In my opinion, it didn’t fail,” Green said. “In my opinion, we got 95 votes this time, 66 the last time. So that’s a plus. But whether we get 95 or five, the point is we have to make a statement.”

Precisely. And you just keep making it, Al.

The resolution drafted by Green charged that Trump “has, by his statements, brought the high office of the President of the United States in contempt, ridicule, disgrace, and disrepute, has sown seeds of discord among the people of the United States, has demonstrated that he is unfit to be President, and has betrayed his trust as President of the United States to the manifest injury of the people of the United States, and has committed a high misdemeanor in office”.

At least.

In a reversal of his previous votes on the question of impeachment, Representative Jerrold Nadler, the chairman of the judiciary committee, voted against killing the resolution. Nadler said that the initiative should be referred to his committee, which would traditionally originate articles of impeachment.

Separately on Wednesday afternoon, the House voted in a largely symbolic move to hold the attorney general, William Barr, and the commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, in contempt of congress for their failure to reply to requests for documents and testimony pertaining to the Trump administration’s efforts to include a citizenship question on the 2020 US census.

The White House replied to the vote with a statement calling it “another lawless attempt to harass the President and his Administration”.

What, in the name of Sam Hill, is "lawless" about a vote to hold someone in contempt of Congress?

Contempt vote

A day after the full House passed a civil contempt resolution authorizing its committees to take the Trump administration to court and pursue criminal contempt cases to enforce their subpoenas, the House Oversight Committee is testing the waters.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Oversight Committee passed a contempt resolution on a 24-15 vote for both Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, specifically because the Trump administration is not complying with the committee’s subpoena request for information on why they added a US citizenship question to the 2020 census. Republican Rep. Justin Amash (MI), a vocal supporter of impeaching President Trump, voted with Democrats.

[...]

Oversight Committee Chair Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and his committee members have been trying to learn more about why the citizenship question was added [to the 2020 census], seeking documents and witnesses from the administration to get answers.

Of course, they haven’t been successful — the Trump administration has refused to comply with the committee’s requests, as it has with all other congressional subpoenas. On Wednesday, the administration asserted sweeping executive privilege to block the committee’s access to documents related to the census.

[...]

Cummings’s proposed resolution is “to proceed with both criminal and civil actions to enforce the Committee’s bipartisan subpoenas,” meaning the committee could pursue a criminal contempt case against Ross and Barr. That’s a stronger stance than House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler (D-NY) has taken against Barr so far; on Monday, Nadler announced he was holding off on pursuing criminal contempt after his committee struck a deal with the Justice Department to get previously redacted parts of the Mueller report.

[...]

Cummings’s contempt resolution is the latest test of whether Congress can hold the Trump administration accountable.

  Vox

Except if it doesn't produce anything, it's not much good to us. Trump's people don't care.  They wear contempt like a badge.

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

Barr contempt citation on hold

House judiciary committee chair Jerry Nadler announced that an agreement had been reached for the DoJ to start turning over “key” materials from the special counsel Robert Mueller (who stepped down as an employee of the DoJ last month) Trump-Russia investigation. This put his plans (whether real or not) to hold attorney general Bill Barr (top dog at the DoJ) in criminal contempt of Congress “in abeyance for now”.

[...]

Chairman Nadler made the following statement: “I am pleased to announce that the Department of Justice has agreed to begin complying with our committee’s subpoena by opening Robert Mueller’s most important files to us, providing us with key evidence that the Special Counsel used to assess whether the President and others obstructed justice or were engaged in other misconduct. The Department will share the first of these documents with us later today. All members of the Judiciary Committee—Democrats and Republicans alike—will be able to view them. These documents will allow us to perform our constitutional duties and decide how to respond to the allegations laid out against the President by the Special Counsel.

“Given our conversations with the Department, I will hold the criminal contempt process in abeyance for now. We have agreed to allow the Department time to demonstrate compliance with this agreement. If the Department proceeds in good faith and we are able to obtain everything that we need, then there will be no need to take further steps. If important information is held back, then we will have no choice but to enforce our subpoena in court and consider other remedies. It is critical that Congress is able to obtain the information we need to do our jobs, ensuring no one is above the law and bringing the American public the transparency they deserve.”

[...]

On April 19, the House judiciary committee issued a subpoena for the unredacted Mueller report and key underlying evidence. The Department of Justice refused to comply with the May 1 deadline for production of those materials.

Although the Committee made repeated attempts to negotiate for the materials responsive to the subpoena, the Department cut off negotiations on the evening of May 7.

On May 8, the committee voted to recommend that the House hold Attorney General [William] Barr in contempt of Congress.

[...]

That coincides with an important hearing where former White House counsel under Richard Nixon, John Dean, and other former US attorneys of more recent vintage, will testify to explain how prosecutors go through the process [of] investigating and taking action over obstruction of justice and abuse of power.

  The Guardian

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

Step one in holding Bill Barr accountable; Trump claims executive privilege

The House Judiciary Committee voted Wednesday to recommend the House hold Attorney General William P. Barr in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over Robert S. Mueller III’s unredacted report, hours after President Trump asserted executive privilege to shield the full report and underlying evidence from public view.

  NYT

He doesn't want you to see the report that fully exonerates him.

The Justice Department decried it as an unnecessary and overwrought reaction designed to stoke a fight.

Refusing to cooperate with Congress might have been the initial blow in that fight.

Kerri Kupec, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, responded, “The accommodation process between coequal branches of government is supposed to be a two-way street. Unfortunately, the only side who has made accommodations is the attorney general, who made extraordinary efforts to provide Congress and the public with information about the Special Counsel’s work.”

Yes, Kerri, we all - including Rober Mueller - saw how extraordinary his efforts were.

The executive privilege assertion was Mr. Trump’s first use of the secrecy powers as president. The Justice Department described it as “protective” to allow Mr. Trump time to fully review the materials to make a final privilege determination. But the [...] the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, indicated that no change of heart was coming.

[...]

“Neither the White House nor Attorney General Barr will comply with Chairman Nadler’s unlawful and reckless demands.”

She added that “faced with Chairman Nadler’s blatant abuse of power, and at the attorney general’s request, the president has no other option than to make a protective assertion of executive privilege.”

Another stalling tactic.

Mr. Trump’s invoking of privilege for the first time as president could tie up the material in court and significantly complicate Democrats’ efforts to call other witnesses. Mr. Nadler said Wednesday it could delay a potential hearing with Mr. Mueller himself in the Judiciary Committee.

And it could also limit testimony by Donald F. McGahn II, a former White House counsel and key witness in the special counsel’s investigation, scheduled under subpoena for May 21.

[...]

Complying with the subpoena, Mr. Boyd wrote, would require the department to violate “the law, court rules, and court orders” as well as grand jury secrecy rules. Republicans in the Judiciary Committee hearing room returned to that point again and again as they accused Democrats of putting Mr. Barr in an untenable situation of choosing between their subpoena and the law.

Democrats said they did not expect Mr. Barr to break the law and unilaterally release grand jury secrets. Rather, they said they had repeatedly asked him to join the committee in petitioning a judge to unseal material for the grand jury for committee use. He refused.

[...]

If the full House follows the committee’s recommendation, it would be only the second time in American history that the nation’s top law enforcement official is found to be in contempt of Congress.

[...]

House Republicans did it for the first time in 2012, when they held Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in contempt in connection with requests for information about the botched “Fast and Furious” gun trafficking investigation. Republicans frequently cited that case on Wednesday in an effort to paint Democrats as unreasonable and impatient. They had waited hundreds of days before escalating their fight over documents to a contempt citation, they said. Democrats waited just a few weeks in the case of Mr. Barr.

[...]

The example is a potentially cautionary one for both sides. Despite President Barack Obama’s assertion of executive privilege over the material in questions, House lawmakers ultimately prevailed in court, forcing the administration to hand over the evidence. But the process took years to play out and could have taken longer if the Obama administration had appealed a court’s decision.

[...]

While defying a congressional subpoena is technically a misdemeanor crime, it is up to the Justice Department to decide whether or not to prosecute.

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

UPDATE:



The latter, I'm sure.

As expected, Barr won't turn over unredacted Mueller report

United States House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler on Monday scheduled a Wednesday vote to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress after Barr failed to comply with a deadline to provide Special Counsel Robert Mueller's full report on his Russia probe.

  alJazeera

And then what?

Although a contempt vote would send a message, it wouldn't force the Justice Department to hand over the report. Nor would it guarantee criminal charges against Barr. House approval of the contempt citation would send a criminal referral to the US attorney for the District of Columbia, a Justice Department official who is likely to defend the attorney general.

[...]

Democratic House leaders have signaled they will methodically take advantage of all the legal steps available. They could also file a civil lawsuit against the Justice Department - an option that could take months or even years to resolve. Some members of the committee have suggested they also could fine Barr as he withholds the information.

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