Teresa Hanafin writes the daily Fast Forward for the Boston Globe.
As he did with the Vietnam War, Trump has decided to sit out the House impeachment inquiry, using what constitutional experts say are bone spurs spurious arguments to claim that Democratic House leaders are conducting an illegitimate inquiry.
He not only is refusing to cooperate with the investigation, he also has declared war on Congress’s very right to investigate the executive branch. It’s a remarkable moment.
The result is that Trump is blocking all employees of the executive branch from testifying before Congress, will withhold every document Congress requests, and will ignore every subpoena that congressional committees issue. We’ll see today what the Dems do next.
Just remember this: Under the Constitution, the House is empowered to impeach, and can conduct an inquiry and hearings any way it wants. The president doesn’t get to tell the House what to do and how to do it.
Many of you have e-mailed me about the impeachment process. Think of it like a district attorney’s investigation and a grand jury. Several House committees (the prosecutors) are currently investigating to determine whether there are grounds for impeachment. If they decide they have enough evidence, they will write up articles of impeachment (charges) and present them to the full House (the grand jury) for a vote.
Nowhere in a grand jury process does the accused or his lawyers get to jump in, call witnesses, interview witnesses, subpoena witnesses, etc. It’s one-sided by design. And that’s also how a House impeachment process works.
So when Trump’s lawyer writes in his letter to House Democratic leaders that Trump is being denied “the right to cross-examine witnesses, to call witnesses, to receive transcripts of testimony, to have access to evidence, to have counsel present,” he’s being disingenuous. He knows very well that all of those rights kick in at the impeachment trial, which would be held in the Senate.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The break will come, here, if our Republican Senators figure out (they are very slow learners) that Trump hasn’t a snowball’s chance in a jet engine of winning reelection in 2020. The clock is ticking. Will they get a clue and get on board with impeachment for their own rapacious purposes? Our will they watch Trump go down and take a lot of Republicans with him? It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
That depends on whether the American public sees through Trump’s lies.
Trump now has a very high disapproval rating (almost 54 percent), and half of Americans now support impeaching him (49 percent), and anti-Trump voters are highly motivated. People don’t just kinda dislike him. They detest him, passionately. This is key–whether disgust with this moron will bring Democratic voters to the polls. It will.
Trump isn’t going to lose his committed 30 percent–the MAGA hat vote. But it’s not enough for him to win again, barely, as he did last time, and I suspect that Repugnicans are starting to see that.
In the coming Presidential debates, Trump, in his present state, simply won’t be able to avoid looking as crazy and ignorant as he is, and he has supplied his opposition with rich materials with which to mount anti-Trump media campaigns. (Lord, let me write some of those scripts!) Imagine him in a debate with any of the current Democratic candidates. You would need a mop to clean him up after the event. It will be child’s play for a debate opponent to prod him into saying things crazy enough to turn the election, and his handlers know that he is uncontrollable. If he survives to see this election through, he’s going to lose by a landslide.
I suspect that a lot of Republican leaders are looking at maps, right now, shaking their heads, and seeing that it’s not winnable. I imagine Mitch McConnell, in some Hitler/Downfall parody meme, doing exactly that.
“Nowhere in a grand jury [or House Impeachment] process does the accused or his lawyers get to jump in, call witnesses, interview witnesses, subpoena witnesses, etc. .. So when Trump’s lawyer writes in his letter to House Democratic leaders that Trump is being denied [those rights]”…
…he’s LYING because no such rights exist! And it’s a lie titrated for direct injection into the hobbled brains of the Trumpcore—the slightly brighter of whom had already moved from “They’re always picking on him” to “It’s a kangaroo court,” based on fuzzy recollections of [irrelevant] TV court dramas.
The accused’s predictable bait&switch from flat denial to process-instead-of-issues has already happened. I kind of wish the Speaker hadn’t so savvily skipped the “usual” first vote (even tho not required), as that move allows a little wiggle room for debate. But then that’s just me, optimistically imagining that the dumbistas might back down from just one completely inarguable point. She’s probably right not to waste any vulnerable Dem seats just to deny them another bit of gristle.
This is a remarkable moment in U.S. history. Checks and balance, the stuff of elementary school civics, is under attack. The bedrock foundation of our nation is in question. Make no mistake that we are at a turning point. Future historians will look back at this season and judge us all. I hope our nation is up to the challenge. God save the United States of America.
Republican Senators seem ready to support the principle that the President is above the law and the executive branch is not coequal with the Congress and can ignore its demands for information.
I am astounded.
You’d think that after learning and thinking about history for so many years it wouldn’t surprise me. But it does. And, it hurts. It’s not just my country….it’s people I know, love and had respected….
The lessons of how societies can knuckle under to dictators, the human tendency to obey authority, the banality of modern evil…. Dred Scott, Wounded Knee, Joe McCarthy, My Lai…the most despicable chapters of American history….the worst malefactors of our past…and here we are AGAIN, right now.
II was thinking as I drove here to school just now….
The “deplorables”, the misogynists, the haters, the misfits, the know-nothings who revel in their own ignorance….the sorts of people who piss on the common good then walk away laughing…I GET that. I understand how those people love Trump.
But what about the people who I like and even love…. decent people I used to respect. That’s what really hurts, Diane. Trump and his ilk haven’t just further divided our country…I feel like he’s divided my own brain…..and my heart. What a tragedy.
Yesterday he defended his decision to abandon the Kurds by saying they were just defending their homeland, they were not with us at Normandy Beach. Our only allies then were the UK and Canada. So to hell with NATO and other alliances. America alone.
“we are at a turning point. ”
From the Nixon impeachment era
the Committee approved three articles of impeachment against Nixon, for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress, and reported those articles to the House of Representatives.
Nixon refused to hand over some evidence, hence the obstruction of justice charge. So I think we can trust that the system will again work.
“He knows very well that all of those rights kick in at the impeachment trial, which would be held in the Senate.” Stop right there at “He knows very well.” No he doesn’t know.
His lawyers know that the House of Representatives is akin to a Grand Jury. The Senate conducts the trial.
His lawyers know. Trump understands nothing.
Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and Mike Pompeo walk into a bar. Giuliani orders a highball, Pompeo gets a martini, and Trump asks for a baba. The bartender’s confused, “What’s that? Never heard of a drink called a baba.” So Pompeo and Guiliani explain, and Trump drinks from the nipple of a warm bottle of milk and takes a nap.
Looking back, I’m sorry to have made fun of this situation. It’s not funny. And Trump is evil, not stupid.
“So when Trump’s lawyer writes in his letter to House Democratic leaders that Trump is being denied “the right to cross-examine witnesses, to call witnesses, to receive transcripts of testimony, to have access to evidence, to have counsel present,” he’s being disingenuous. ”
Maybe he just doesn’t know the law. Would that be a surprise?