investigations – Capitol Hill Blue

Ultimately, voters will decide Trump’s future

July 25, 2019

Former special counsel Robert Mueller returns to the witness table following a break in his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Robert Mueller’s testimony Wednesday sent the clearest signal yet that impeachment may be slipping out of reach for Democrats and that the ultimate verdict on President Donald Trump will be rendered by voters in the 2020 election.

Democrats had hoped the former special counsel’s appearance would be a turning point. A Marine who served in Vietnam, Mueller is the kind of square-jawed federal prosecutor to whom Americans may have once listened as a trusted source of authority. But in this era of stark political polarization, galvanizing the public is a difficult task even if Mueller wanted to produce a viral moment, which he never seemed inclined to do. Rather than swoop in to give voice to the 448-page report, Mueller said very few words.

What Mueller did say was striking: Trump was not exonerated of potential crimes. His report found Russia interfered in the 2016 election in “sweeping and systematic” fashion. Accepting foreign campaign assistance is wrong, he agreed. But Mueller’s reluctance to engage, and his one-word answers, deprived the country of a where-were-you-when moment that could bring decisive conclusion to the probe and Trump’s role in trying to obstruct the investigation.

“It was not a hoax,” Mueller testified of Russian election interference.

The result, after more than six hours at the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees, was that the sides in Washington were retrenching to their familiar outposts, leaving voters to decide what to do next.

Trump derided Mueller’s appearance — “disaster,” he tweeted — and started fundraising off it. The president’s reelection campaign set a $2 million goal over 24 hours, it said, to counter those trying to “TRICK the American People into believing their LIES.”

Allies of the White House quickly joined in. GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called Mueller’s appearance “sad.” Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the top Republican on the Intelligence panel, said the hearing was the “last gasp” of the investigation.

“It’s time for the curtain to close on the Russia hoax,” Nunes said. “The conspiracy theory is dead.”

Much was riding on Mueller’s appearance, coming months after the release of his report in April. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is weighing liberal calls for impeachment against her own instincts for a more measured approach investigating the Trump administration and laying out the findings.

Activists on the party’s left flank have been impatient with what they see as Pelosi’s slow-walking of impeachment — but they’ve also been deferential to her strategy. More than 85 House Democrats have called for the House to begin impeachment proceedings, and more lawmakers are expected to add their names after Mueller’s testimony.

Yet even though Democrats hold the House majority, they’re far from the 218 votes that would be needed to approve articles of impeachment. With Republicans controlling the Senate, many Democrats warn moving forward is a political dead end.

“If we have a case for impeachment, that’s the place we will have to go,” Pelosi said afterward.

Mueller, in his testimony, didn’t push the issue any further. While Mueller’s team declined to prosecute the president, in part because of a Justice Department opinion against indicting a sitting president, the report also suggested other remedies, including in Congress. Asked about impeachment as an option Wednesday, Mueller refused to comment on it.

The former special counsel was always going to be a reluctant witness who wanted his report to speak for itself. Democrats knew what they would encounter even if they were hoping for a Mueller of a different vintage, from his time leading the FBI after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Instead, they saw a less forceful public presence, hard of hearing at times, hesitant to answer many of the questions, but one still skilled enough in the ways of Washington to not read his report in a way that Democrats could exploit.

When Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., asked if Mueller would read a certain section from the report, Mueller turned the tables: “I’m happy to have you read it.”

Republicans had their own expectations and tried to portray Mueller as an actor in an elaborate attempt to undermine Trump’s election. Their revived their long-running theory about the origins of the report during Hillary Clinton’s campaign and posed questions that seemed well designed to be replayed on conservative media, even if they, too, found Mueller’s answers were not entirely fulfilling.

It had all the trappings of a classic Washington political drama, yet brought little closure.

Even if Mueller had been a more eager player, he may not have been able to make a more convincing case. Gone are the Watergate-era hearings, when lawmakers crossed party lines to engage critically over then-President Richard Nixon. The impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton changed that dynamic, and the partisan divide since has only deepened to a point of rupturing whatever’s left of political comity.

Still, Mueller’s appearance was far from a political loss for either party. Ahead of the 2020 election, both are trying to reach the slice of Americans who have not hardened to partisan positions.

A June poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found 31% of Americans said they didn’t know enough to say whether Mueller’s report had completely cleared Trump of coordination with Russia and 30% didn’t know whether it had not completely cleared Trump of obstruction. A CNN poll found that just 3% said they had read the whole report.

Perhaps Mueller’s testimony, with his button-down lawyer’s approach, reached some of them.

As voters consider what they’ll do, Mueller did leave them with one definitive point — a warning about what happened in 2016 and a plea that they pay attention to what may be coming.

“Over the course of my career, I’ve seen a number of challenges to our democracy,” Mueller said. “The Russian government’s effort to interfere in our election is among the most serious. … This deserves the attention of every American.”

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AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro has covered Congress since 2010.

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Copyright © 2019 Capitol Hill Blue

Mueller’s testimony: Something to say or not?

July 24, 2019July 24, 2019

Robert Mueller (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Former Trump-Russia special counsel Robert Mueller finally faces congressional interrogators on Wednesday, testifying in televised hearings that Democrats hope will weaken President Donald Trump’s reelection prospects in ways that Mueller’s book-length report did not. Republicans are ready to defend Trump and turn their fire on Mueller and his team instead.

Back-to-back Capitol Hill appearances, Mueller’s first since wrapping his two-year Russia probe last spring, carry the extraordinary spectacle of a prosecutor discussing in public a criminal investigation he conducted into a sitting U.S. president.

Mueller, known for his taciturn nature, has warned that he will not stray beyond what’s already been revealed in his report. And the Justice Department has instructed Mueller to stay strictly within those parameters, giving him a formal directive to point to if he faces questions he does not want to answer.

On Tuesday, Democrats on the House judiciary and intelligence committees granted his request to have his top aide in the investigation, Aaron Zebley, sit at the table with him. Zebley is not expected to be sworn in for questioning by the judiciary panel. But he will be able to answer questions before the intelligence committee, where, a committee aide said, he will be sworn in. The aide was not authorized to discuss the hearing preparations publicly and requested anonymity.

Trump lashed out early Wednesday ahead of the hearing, saying on Twitter that “Democrats and others” are trying to fabricate a crime and pin it on “a very innocent President.”

“Why didn’t Robert Mueller investigate the investigators?” Trump said in his tweet.

Mueller’s approach to testifying may well deny Democrats the made-by-TV moments they want to rally their base. But Republicans, too, are likely to be left without their sought-after confirmation that the Russia investigation was a politically tainted waste of time.

Trump this week feigned indifference to Mueller’s testimony , telling reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, “I’m not going to be watching — probably — maybe I’ll see a little bit of it.”

The president has a light schedule when Mueller begins speaking Wednesday morning, then heads to West Virginia for evening fundraisers. The TVs aboard Air Force One are likely to be tuned to coverage of the hearings, and the president is expected to watch or be briefed on most of the proceedings, according to four administration officials and Republicans close to the White House. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal plans.

Yet the former special counsel need not say much to have his own quiet impact: His mere appearance will give voice to the 448-page legal thicket known as the Mueller report. His testimony, however sparse, will convert from dense paragraphs into plain English a document many in America have yet to wade through.

Mueller may create a powerful impression simply by confirming without hesitation some damning details from his report. A former FBI director who spent 12 years parrying questions from lawmakers at oversight hearings, and decades before that as a prosecutor who asked questions of his own, Mueller is unlikely to be goaded into saying anything he doesn’t want to say.

In fact, he had to be subpoenaed to show up in the first place.

Wednesday’s first hearing before the Judiciary Committee will focus on whether the president illegally obstructed justice by attempting to seize control of Mueller’s investigation.

The special counsel examined nearly a dozen episodes , including Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey and his efforts to have Mueller himself removed. Mueller in his report ultimately declined to state whether the president broke the law, saying such a judgment would be unfair in light of Justice Department legal opinions that bar the indictment of a sitting president.

The afternoon hearing before the House intelligence committee will dive into ties between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

On that question, Mueller’s report documented a trail of contacts between Russians and Trump associates — including a Trump Tower meeting at which the president’s eldest son expected to receive dirt on Democrat Hillary Clinton — but the special counsel found insufficient evidence of a criminal conspiracy aiming to tip the 2016 election.

Like most Russia-related hearings before Congress, this one is likely to divide sharply along partisan lines.

Democrats are angling to draw Mueller out on some of the most incendiary findings of the report, including Trump’s repeated attempts to choke off the investigation.

Even if the testimony won’t inspire impeachment demands — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has made clear she will not pursue impeachment, for now — Democrats hope Mueller can unambiguously spell out questionable, norm-shattering actions by the president.

Republicans, by contrast, are likely to confront Mueller on the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe and whether opposition to the Trump campaign drove the early days of the investigation.

They’ll ask about a dossier of opposition research compiled by a former British spy that was funded by Democrats and cited by the Justice Department in its application for a secret surveillance warrant on a former Trump campaign associate.

They’ll also press Mueller on Peter Strzok, the former FBI counterintelligence agent who badmouthed Trump over text message even as he was helping lead an investigation into the campaign. Mueller fired him once the texts were discovered two years ago, but Strzok has remained a talking point for Trump in trying to discredit Mueller’s work.

Mueller also is likely to be asked about his own tensions with Attorney General William Barr over how the report was handled and how its findings were communicated to the public.

Mueller complained privately to Barr in March that the attorney general’s four-page letter summarizing the main findings of his report “did not fully capture the context, nature and substance of this office’s work and conclusions.” Barr, in turn, has called Mueller’s note “a bit snitty.”

Mueller has made clear he didn’t think it was appropriate to make a determination one way or the other about whether the president had committed a crime. He has rejected Barr’s assessment that the evidence couldn’t satisfy an obstruction of justice allegation, noting both in his report — and, again, in a public statement from the Justice Department podium — that if he had confidence the president had not committed a crime, he would have said so.

Barr had no such hesitation and said Mueller shouldn’t have started investigating the president if he wasn’t prepared to reach a conclusion.

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Associated Press writer Jonathan Lemire in New York contributed to this report.

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Copyright © 2019 Capitol Hill Blue

Trump lets Barr launch his own ‘witch hunt’ over investigations

May 23, 2019

resident Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump on Thursday granted Attorney General William Barr new powers to review and potentially release classified information related to the origins of the Russia investigation, a move aimed at accelerating Barr’s inquiry into whether U.S. officials improperly surveilled Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Trump directed the intelligence community to “quickly and fully cooperate” with Barr’s probe. The directive marked an escalation in Trump’s efforts to “investigate the investigators,” as he continues to try to undermine the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe amid mounting Democratic calls for impeachment proceedings.

Press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement that Trump is delegating to Barr the “full and complete authority” to declassify documents relating to the probe, which would ease his efforts to review the sensitive intelligence underpinnings of the investigation. Such an action could create fresh tensions within the FBI and other intelligence agencies, which have historically resisted such demands.

Barr has already asked John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to examine the origins of the Russia investigation to determine whether intelligence and surveillance methods used during the probe were lawful and appropriate. Still, Barr has been directly involved, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss it publicly, and is also working with CIA Director Gina Haspel, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Trump is giving Barr a new tool in his investigation, empowering his attorney general to unilaterally unseal documents that the Justice Department has historically regarded as among its most highly secret. Warrants obtained from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, for instance, are not made public — not even to the person on whom the surveillance was authorized.

Trump explicitly delegated Barr with declassification power — noting it would not automatically extend to another attorney general — and only for use in the review of the Russia investigation. Before using the new authority, Barr should consult with intelligence officials “to the extent he deems it practicable,” Trump wrote in a memo formalizing the matter.

Trump has frequently claimed his campaign was the victim of “spying,” though the intelligence community has insisted it acted lawfully in following leads in the Russia investigation and conducted surveillance under court order.

Wray vocally opposed the release by Congress last year of details from a secret surveillance warrant obtained by the bureau on a former campaign adviser, Carter Page. The White House had eagerly encouraged Republicans on the House intelligence committee to disclose that classified information, believing it could help undermine the Russia investigation.

Wray, though cooperating with Barr in a review of the origins of the Russia probe, would presumably balk at declassifying classified information that could reveal sensitive sources or methods of investigators.

Despite Mueller finding no evidence to support criminal charges against Americans related to Russia’s actions, his report documented extensive Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 campaign and willingness on the part of some in Trump’s orbit to accept their aid.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff accused Trump and Barr of trying to “conspire to weaponize law enforcement and classified information against their political enemies.”

“The coverup has entered a new and dangerous phase,” Schiff said in a statement released late Thursday. “This is un-American.”

Typically, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence coordinates declassification work by contacting various agencies where classified material originated to get their input on what should be released or not disclosed based on legal exemptions. The president, however, has the authority to declassify anything he wants.

A former senior intelligence official who served in the Obama administration said their principle concern is that the attorney general, hand-picked by Trump, could declassify and release selective bits to make the previous administration and former senior officials look bad. The former official spoke on the condition that the official would not be named in order to describe the concerns of intelligence professionals.

Thursday’s move further solidifies Barr’s position in Trump’s eyes as a legal warrior on fighting on his behalf.

After Mueller submitted his report to Barr in March, the attorney general released a four-page summary to Congress. Barr’s letter framed the debate about the probe over the next few weeks and, White House officials believe, allowed Trump to declare victory before the release of the full report, the contents of which are far more ambiguous.

Trump also appreciated Barr’s combative stance with lawmakers and reporters as he defended the Justice Department’s handling of the report, and again when he declined to appear before Congress and defied a subpoena, drawing a possible contempt charge. Trump has told close confidants that he “finally” had “my attorney general,” according to two Republicans close to the White House who were not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.

“Today’s action will help ensure that all Americans learn the truth about the events that occurred, and the actions that were taken, during the last Presidential election and will restore confidence in our public institutions,” Sanders said.

Two of Trump’s congressional allies, Reps. Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan, were seen by reporters earlier Thursday at the Justice Department.

Associated Press writers Mike Balsamo, Deb Riechmann and Jonathan Lemire contributed to this report.

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Copyright © 2019 Capitol Hill Blue

Angry Trump storms out, says ‘no more’

May 23, 2019

President Donald Trump walks off after delivering a statement in the Rose Garden of the White House, Wednesday, May 22, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump abruptly stalked out of a White House meeting with congressional leaders Wednesday, flatly declaring he would no longer work with Democrats unless they drop all investigations in the aftermath of the special counsel’s Trump-Russia report.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called it all “very, very, very strange” and said she was praying for Trump and the nation. Trump tweeted his thanks for her prayers but said he would not proceed down two tracks — investigation and legislation.

Democrats said his ultimatum seemed scripted, with signs declaring his innocence already prepared for his outdoor remarks that followed. Yet Trump’s unease with congressional oversight and talk of what he called the “i-word” — impeachment — now threatens to deprive him of legislative accomplishments for the remainder of his term.

The scene playing out live on television was reminiscent of earlier ones at the White House, including during the federal government shutdown, when Trump walked out on Democrats. While this standoff could benefit him politically in the short term, with his tough talk stirring up supporters, it leaves his trade deals, a new budget and other goals in jeopardy as he heads into a re-election campaign. Democrats called it another Trump temper tantrum.

“I want to do infrastructure,” Trump said he told Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, noting the scheduled topic of the meeting.

“But you know what? We can’t do it under these circumstances,” he said he told them. “So get these phony investigations over.”

Without ever shaking anyone’s hand, or even taking a seat, Trump turned and left the three-minute meeting. He strode to the Rose Garden where reporters and TV cameras had been assembled and proceeded to assail the Democrats, particularly Pelosi for her comment earlier in the morning on Capitol Hill that she believed the president was engaged in a “cover-up” of the Russia probe.

“I don’t do cover-ups,” Trump fumed.

On Twitter late Wednesday, Trump denied Pelosi’s claim that he had “a temper tantrum for us all to see.”

“I was purposely very polite and calm, much as I was minutes later with the press in the Rose Garden,” he tweeted. “Can be easily proven. It is all such a lie!”

On Capitol Hill, Pelosi said Trump “just took a pass” on working on national infrastructure problems.

Flanked by Schumer and other House and Senate leaders, Pelosi said the Democrats had gone to the White House “to give this president the opportunity to have a signature infrastructure initiative.”

The meeting had been set weeks ago, after Trump and the Democratic leaders agreed to talk further about a possible $2 trillion infrastructure proposal. Democrats have been working with the president’s daughter Ivanka, and Trump was due to provide his ideas on how to pay for it.

But he told them he couldn’t engage on infrastructure because Pelosi said “something terrible,” according to an administration official and another person familiar with what happened in the room.

Democrats said they doubted he actually was ever going to put forward a plan. Schumer — who brought his own 35-page proposal to the meeting — said that when Trump “was forced to say how he would pay for it he had to run away.”

What started as a challenging day for Pelosi as she tries to tamp down growing calls for an impeachment inquiry swiftly turned, with the attention going back on the president. Even some Republicans noted the shift.

“In the end we’ve got work to do,” said Sen. John Cornyn, who called the meeting dramatic. “And I think the best thing we could do for the people we work for is to try to make progress where we can.”

Earlier Wednesday, House Democrats had convened for a closed-door meeting amid Trump’s stonewalling of their investigators, as a growing number of the party’s lawmakers say they want to open an impeachment inquiry. They say it’s not necessarily aimed at removing the president from office but to bolster their position in court against his blocking their probes with broad claims of immunity. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York spoke up at the meeting, and some two dozen Democrats have signed on to the idea.

With her leadership team, Pelosi, who has resisted pressure to impeach, suggested patience. She pointed rank-and-file Democrats toward the legal battles that she said have already found success i n forcing Trump to comply with investigations.

“We do believe it’s important to follow the facts,” Pelosi told reporters afterward. “We believe that no one is above the law, including the president of the United States, and we believe that the president of the United States is engaged in a cover-up.”

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the White House cannot block subpoenas for Trump’s financial records from Deutsche Bank, which has lent his real estate company millions of dollars. On Monday a federal judge also ruled against Trump in a separate financial records dispute with Congress, though his team filed a notice of appeal that is expected to keep the court battles running for months.

Pelosi said the court victories were “no surprise.”

The Democrats leaving that Capitol meeting appeared to be taking hers words into consideration, even as many say the march to impeach becomes more inevitable. Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen, who called for the impeachment inquiry on Tuesday, said he could see both sides.

Of leaders’ reluctance, Cohen said “it’s a political concern rather than an actual constitutional one.”

Rep. Katie Hill, a freshman from a California swing district, said she is undecided on starting an impeachment inquiry but wants to let the court action play out.

The more Trump “defies us, the more that it’s becoming an inevitability,” she said. But she doesn’t think the Democratic caucus “is there yet.”

Pelosi faces her own political calculations amid the push-pull of impeachment. While Democrats have a majority in the House, and would likely find support for starting impeachment proceedings, it could be a tighter vote than the 235-197 margin suggests. Many lawmakers come from relatively conservative districts where Trump also has support.

Democrats have long said they can work on two tracks — conducting oversight and legislating on their agenda of lower health care costs and infrastructure investment. But Trump says they can’t do both.

“They can continue the Witch Hunt … or get back to work,” Trump tweeted.

Pelosi showed no signs of backing down.

“The fact is, in plain sight, in the public domain, this president is obstructing justice and he’s engaged in a cover-up, and that could be impeachable,” Pelosi said during an event later at the liberal Center for American Progress.

“As they say, the cover-up is frequently worse than the crime,” she said. She reminded that the third article of impeachment against President Richard Nixon was his obstruction of Congress.

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Associated Press writers Laurie Kellman, Alan Fram, Matthew Daly, Michael Balsamo, Jonathan Lemire, Eric Tucker and Mark Sherman contributed to this report.
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Copyright © 2019 Capitol Hill Blue

Jail for all the president’s men?

May 4, 2019May 4, 2019

Whether fact or folklore, this small space in the basement of the Capitol with steel bars is sometimes referred to as the old “House jail,” but it used today to protect the cherished Lincoln Catafalque, the pedestal for caskets used during state funerals, in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

They’re talking about jailing people at the Capitol. Imposing steep fines. All sorts of extraordinary, if long-shot measures to force the White House to comply with Democratic lawmakers’ request for information about President Donald Trump stemming from the special counsel’s Russia investigation.

This is the remarkable state of affairs between the executive and legislative branches, unseen in recent times, as Democrats try to break through Trump’s blockade of investigations and exert congressional oversight of the administration.

“One of the things that everybody in this country needs to think about is when the president denies the Congress documents and access to key witnesses, basically what they’re doing is saying, Congress you don’t count,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

“We cannot — we simply cannot — have a presidency that is run as if it were a king or a dictator in charge,” said Cummings, D-Md.

Trump’s blanket refusal to engage in oversight — and Democrats’ unrelenting demand that he do so — is testing the system of checks and balances with a deepening standoff in the aftermath of Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Trump derides the oversight of his business dealings and his administration as “presidential harassment” and has the backing of most Republicans in Congress. With Mueller’s work completed, Trump wants closure to what he has long complained was a “witch hunt.”

“No more costly & time-consuming investigations,” Trump tweeted.

Stunned by the administration’s refusal to allow officials to testify or respond to document requests, lawmakers have been left to think aloud about their next steps against the White House.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, has given Attorney General William Barr a Monday deadline to comply with a subpoena demanding a redacted version of Mueller’s report, along with its underlying evidence, or face a contempt charge.

Barr could face another subpoena to appear before Nadler’s committee after skipping a hearing Thursday in a dispute over the rules for questioning him. Nadler, D-N.Y., also has subpoenaed testimony from former White House counsel Don McGahn.

Cummings is considering what to do on several fronts, including about testimony from Carl Kline, the White House’s personnel security director. Cummings said Kline declined last week to answer specific questions in a closed-session hearing about the security clearances granted for White House advisers Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the president’s son-in-law and daughter. Also, the House Ways and Means Committee is being refused access to Trump’s tax returns.

Republicans are largely declining to join Democrats in pursuing the investigations any further.

“It is over,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as Barr testified last week before the committee. Graham, R-S.C., has asked Mueller to respond to Barr’s testimony, particularly after the disclosure of a letter the special counsel sent Barr complaining about attorney general’s summary of the 400-plus page Russia report.

The rejection of oversight is the latest and perhaps most high-profile example of the new normal in the Trump era. Gone are the daily White House press briefings, once a fixture in Washington. Administration vacancies go unfilled, leaving fewer officials to respond to congressional requests. Agencies across the government seem more insular than before.

Princeton professor Julian E. Zelizer said what’s unfolding between the White House and Congress “fits in a long history of bad moments when the branches clash over vital information.”

While other presidents, including Barack Obama, have resisted congressional oversight in certain situations, including during Attorney General Eric Holder’s blockade of the “Fast and Furious” gun-running investigation, Zelizer said “Trump is going further by saying no to everything.”

To Zelizer, “certainly there are echoes of Watergate when the administration did everything possible to stonewall Congress as they undertook legitimate investigations and hearings into presidential corruption.”

He said presidents with “too much power” can easily make decisions that undermine government operations in everyday lives. “Should citizens care? Of course, the restraint of presidential power is an essential part of our Constitution and the health of our democracy,” Zelizer said.

Impeachment is being shelved, for now. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and her leadership team are taking a step-by-step approach to the White House standoff, declining any rush to impeachment proceedings, as some in her party want, for a more incremental response.

Pelosi did note this past week that obstructing Congress was one of the articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon.

“Impeachment is never off the table, but should we start there?” Pelosi said Friday. “I don’t agree with that.”

Short of that, lawmakers are considering options for Barr and others. There’s a long history of lawmakers holding officials in contempt. They can sue for compliance with the threat of fines. Some lawmakers are suggesting censuring the attorney general or impeaching him. Others have called for Barr to resign.

And then there’s talk of jail time.

Capitol Hill has been buzzing about the unlikely prospect of using a jail that some say exists somewhere in the Capitol and that was used in the past to detain those in contempt of Congress.

But the House and Senate say no such facility exists.

“No evidence suggests that any room in the Capitol was ever designated for use as a jail,” says an entry on the House website’s historical pages.

During the Civil War, some Confederate soldiers and others were held at a brick building on the site of what’s now the Supreme Court, across the street from the Capitol, that was often referred as the “Capitol Prison” or “Old Capitol Jail,” according to the history page.

Otherwise, those found in contempt “were almost certainly held temporarily in the offices of the Sergeant at Arms, locked in committee anterooms, or put under guard at local hotels,” it says.

Senate Historian Betty Koed said in the past, the District of Columbia’s jail facility has also been used for detentions. “There is no Senate jail,” she said.

Lawmakers remain undeterred. Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., a member of party leadership, said lawmakers have “a whole range of options.”

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Follow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/lisamascaro
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Update on investigations of Trump

April 7, 2019April 7, 2019

President Donald Trump visits a new section of the border wall with Mexico. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Where the investigations related to President Donald Trump stand and what may lie ahead for him:

WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW?

The White House continues to push back against a Democratic request for the IRS to provide six years of Trump’s personal tax returns and the returns for some of his businesses. The returns were officially requested Wednesday by Massachusetts Rep. Richard Neal, who heads the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.

An attorney representing Trump argued Friday that a request for the president’s tax returns “would set a dangerous precedent” if granted and that the IRS cannot legally divulge the information.

William Consovoy, whose firm was retained by Trump to represent him on the matter, said in a letter to the Treasury Department’s general counsel that requests for tax returns “must have a legitimate legislative purpose.” He said Neal’s request for Trump’s tax information is intended to damage the president politically.

Asked Thursday for his response to Neal’s demand, Trump didn’t provide a direct answer.

“They’ll speak to my lawyers; they’ll speak to the attorney general,” Trump said at the White House.

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DID THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN COLLUDE WITH RUSSIA?

According to special counsel Robert Mueller, the answer is no.

In his letter dated March 24, Attorney General William Barr quotes from Mueller’s report saying the investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

The letter does not detail what Mueller learned about a broad range of Trump associates who had Russia-related contacts during the 2016 presidential campaign and transition period. It also doesn’t answer why several of those people lied to federal investigators or Congress during the Russia probe.

Barr is confronting concerns that his four-page letter unduly sanitized the full report in Trump’s favor, including on the key question of whether the president obstructed justice. House Democrats have approved subpoenas for Mueller’s entire report and any exhibits and other underlying evidence that the Justice Department might withhold.

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IS TRUMP OUT OF THE WOODS?

No.

Trump also plays a central role in a separate case in New York, where prosecutors have implicated him in a crime. They say Trump directed his personal lawyer Michael Cohen to make illegal hush-money payments to two women as a way to quash potential sex scandals during the campaign. New York prosecutors also are looking into Trump’s inaugural fund.

Congressional investigations also are swirling around the president. Democrats have launched a sweeping probe of Trump, an aggressive investigation that threatens to shadow the president through the 2020 election season.

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Embattled Trump gears up for distractions & more

March 6, 2019March 6, 2019

President Donald Trump departs after a signing ceremony at the White House Tuesday. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)

The White House has beefed up its legal team. Its political team is ready to distract and disparage. And President Donald Trump is venting against Democratic prying.

Trump’s plan for responding to the multiplying congressional probes into his campaign, White House and personal affairs is coming into focus as newly empowered Democrats intensify their efforts. Deploying a mix of legal legwork and political posturing, the administration is trying to minimize its exposure while casting the president as the victim of overzealous partisans.

“It’s a disgrace, it’s a disgrace for our country,” Trump said at the White House on Tuesday as he accused Democrats of “presidential harassment.”

Typically used to setting the national or global agenda, presidents are by definition on their back foot when they come under investigation. And the latest fusillade of requests for information has the Trump White House, already increasingly focused on the twin challenges of dealing with the probes and the 2020 election, in a reactive position.

Trump’s response points to his increasing frustration with Congress and his intention to seize on the investigations as evidence that he is under siege in Washington.

While Trump is far from the first president to bristle at Capitol Hill oversight, his enthusiastic embrace of political victimhood is still novel — and stands to serve as a key part of his re-election argument. Trump has made railing against the so-called witch hunt against him a staple of his rallies and speeches, revving up crowds by mocking his investigators and news coverage of their proceedings.

That attitude was emphasized Tuesday by Trump’s son Eric, who was among the 81 people and organizations that the House Judiciary Committee has contacted seeking documents as part of a probe into possible obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power. Calling Congress “incompetent,” Eric Trump told Fox News Radio “we’re going to fight the hell out of it. And we’ll fight where we need and we’ll cooperate where we need, but the desperation shows.”

Aware that the shift to divided government would usher in an onslaught of investigations, the White House began making defensive moves late last year. Seeking to be ready for the Democratic-led House, more than a dozen lawyers were added to the White House Counsel’s Office and a seasoned attorney was added to the communications team to handle questions related to the probes.

After Democrats took the House last November, Trump declared that they had to choose between investigating him and earning White House cooperation on matters of bipartisan concern like health care and infrastructure. Trump assessed publicly Tuesday that Democrats had made their choice, saying, “So the campaign begins.”

His aides had already made that determination, with press secretary Sarah Sanders issuing an acerbic statement late Monday calling the Judiciary Committee probe a “disgraceful and abusive investigation.” Trump’s campaign spokeswoman, Kayleigh McEnany, accused Democrats of stopping “at nothing, including destroying the lives and reputations of many innocent Americans who only have sought to serve their country honorably, but who hold different political views than their own.”

White House officials described their plan for addressing the mounting requests as multi-layered. Lawyers in the counsel’s office plan to be cooperative, but are unlikely to provide Democrats with the vast array of documents they’re looking for. In particular, they intend to be deeply protective of executive power and privilege — a defense used by previous administrations against probing lawmakers with varying degrees of success.

Trump said President Barack Obama “didn’t give one letter” when his administration came under congressional investigation. But Obama spokesman Eric Shultz tweeted that the Obama White House produced hundreds of thousands of documents for various congressional inquiries.

Meanwhile, others in the White House and the president’s orbit are preparing to do what they can to bring the fight to Democrats, preparing dossiers about Obama’s invocation of executive privilege when House Republicans investigated his administration. And all acknowledge there is no chance that Trump will stop commenting and criticizing the investigations.

The officials declined to speak on the record in order to discuss the sensitive planning.

The administration approach was on display this week as White House counsel Pat Cipollone pushed back against a request from the House Oversight and Reform Committee for documents related to security clearances for White House officials. In a letter released by the committee chairman, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., Cipollone called the request “unprecedented and extraordinarily intrusive” and offered to provide a briefing and documents “describing the security clearance process.” White House officials said the Cummings inquiries were seen by aides as a thinly veiled attempt to gain potentially embarrassing information on the president’s son-in-law, senior adviser Jared Kushner.

Cummings shot back that the White House position defied “plain common-sense” and said he would consult with colleagues on his next move.

The exchange was predictable, with both sides using the exchange of letters for political means, and in anticipation of almost certain judicial proceedings.

Former Obama administration associate counsel Andy Wright, who also worked as a Capitol Hill investigator, said both parties are aware that their correspondence has multiple audiences.

“You have to assume it’s going to play out in the public space,” he said. “But you also want to create that record of reasonableness so that the court will be inclined to rule in your favor if and when it comes to that.”

As the Judiciary Committee’s voluminous requests circulated around Washington on Monday, the president’s outside array of former allies, associates and staffers communicated among themselves about who was named in the requests and whether they faced new legal jeopardy. Still, some expressed some relief that the requests dealt with documents previously turned over to other investigators. Others maintained the wide-ranging request would bolster Trump’s argument that the probe was a vendetta against him.

But the request affirmed the shadow that current and former staffers still live under. Nearly all the current and former administration officials, friends and family listed on the request have hired private attorneys to navigate both the Mueller probe and now the oversight process — among them Hope Hicks, Reince Priebus, Steve Bannon, Kushner and Don McGahn.

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House Democrats: Trump clearly obstructed justice

March 4, 2019

Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., questions Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker as he appears before the House Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

Declaring it’s “very clear” President Donald Trump obstructed justice, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, says the panel is requesting documents Monday from more than 60 people from Trump’s administration, family and business as part of a rapidly expanding Russia investigation.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said the House Judiciary Committee wants to review documents from the Justice Department, the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. and Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg. Former White House chief of staff John Kelly and former White House counsel Don McGahn also are likely targets, he said.

“We are going to initiate investigations into abuses of power, into corruption and into obstruction of justice,” Nadler said. “We will do everything we can to get that evidence.”

Asked if he believed Trump obstructed justice, Nadler said, “Yes, I do.”

Nadler isn’t calling the inquiry an impeachment investigation but said House Democrats, now in the majority, are simply doing “our job to protect the rule of law” after Republicans during the first two years of Trump’s term were “shielding the president from any proper accountability.”

“We’re far from making decisions” about impeachment, he said.

In a tweet on Sunday, Trump blasted anew the Russia investigation, calling it a partisan probe unfairly aimed at discrediting his win in the 2016 presidential election. “I am an innocent man being persecuted by some very bad, conflicted & corrupt people in a Witch Hunt that is illegal & should never have been allowed to start – And only because I won the Election!” he wrote.

Nadler’s comments follow a bad political week for Trump. He emerged empty-handed from a high-profile summit with North Korea leader Kim Jong Un on denuclearization and Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, in three days of congressional testimony, publicly characterized the president as a “con man” and “cheat.”

Newly empowered House Democrats are flexing their strength with blossoming investigations. A half-dozen House committees are now probing alleged coordination between Trump associates and Russia’s efforts to sway the 2016 election, Trump’s tax returns and possible conflicts of interest involving the Trump family business and policy-making. The House oversight committee, for instance, has set a Monday deadline for the White House to turn over documents related to security clearances after The New York Times reported that the president ordered officials to grant his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s clearance over the objections of national security officials.

Nadler’s added lines of inquiry also come as special counsel Robert Mueller is believed to be wrapping up his work into possible questions of Trump campaign collusion and obstruction in the Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. In his testimony, Cohen acknowledged he did not witness or know directly of collusion between Trump aides and Russia but had his “suspicions.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., on Sunday accused House Democrats of prejudging Trump as part of a query based purely on partisan politics.

“I think Congressman Nadler decided to impeach the president the day the president won the election,” McCarthy said. “Listen to exactly what he said. He talks about impeachment before he even became chairman and then he says, ‘you’ve got to persuade people to get there.’ There’s nothing that the president did wrong.”

“Show me where the president did anything to be impeached…Nadler is setting the framework now that the Democrats are not to believe the Mueller report,” he said.

Nadler said Sunday his committee will seek to review the Mueller report but stressed the investigation “goes far beyond collusion.”

He pointed to what he considered several instances of obstruction of justice by the president, including the “1,100 times he referred to the Mueller investigation as a ‘witch hunt’” as well Trump’s abrupt firing of FBI director James Comey in 2017. According to Comey, Trump had encouraged the then-FBI director to drop an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Trump has denied he told Comey to end the Flynn probe.

“It’s very clear that the president obstructed justice,” Nadler said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has kept calls for impeachment at bay by insisting that Mueller first must be allowed to finish his work, and present his findings publicly — though it’s unclear whether the White House will allow its full release.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who chairs the House intelligence committee, on Sunday also stressed that it’s too early to make judgments about impeachment.

“That is something that we will have to await Bob Mueller’s report and the underlying evidence to determine. We will also have to look at the whole body of improper and criminal actions by the president including those campaign finance crimes to determine whether they rise to the level of removal from office,” Schiff said.

Nadler and McCarthy spoke on ABC’s “This Week,” and Schiff appeared on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

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Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

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The state of Donald Trump is not good

February 6, 2019February 6, 2019

President Donald Trump delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2019. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address had a proposition for Democrats: Set aside investigations and make deals instead.

“If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation,” Trump said.

The line landed with a thud — and even a smattering of laughs — but the president didn’t appear bothered. The offer wasn’t a serious pitch, but a preview of how Trump plans to defend himself in the difficult months to come. With the special counsel probe nearing its end and newly empowered House Democrats just getting started, the president is bracing for a flurry of subpoenas, high-profile hearings and political recriminations.

Trump’s third address to Congress came at perhaps the most vulnerable moment yet of his two-year presidency, troubled by unfulfilled promises, encroaching investigations and a splintering Republican Party.

Haunted by fallout from the longest government shutdown in history and facing the potential of another one next week, his message to lawmakers marked an attempt to seize the high ground ahead of a contentious re-election fight and looming oversight probes.

“An economic miracle is taking place in the United States — and the only thing that can stop it are foolish wars, politics, or ridiculous partisan investigations,” Trump said.

Trump, who successfully ran against Washington in 2016, is gearing up to paint Democrats as purveyors of the “politics of revenge, resistance and retribution.”

It’s a gambit that delighted Republicans in the room, who long ago tired of Trump’s combative approach toward opponents and investigators. But the strategy appeared destined to last for one night only — and couldn’t have found a more unlikely promoter.

Trump has hardly held back against Democrats in recent days. Hours before the speech he assailed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer after the New York Democrat criticized him. Trump said Schumer was “upset that he didn’t win the Senate, after spending a fortune, like he thought he would.” Earlier in the week, in an appeal for border security, Trump argued that “Dems do nothing.”

And Trump had warned in November that if Democrats move on his tax returns and seek to stymie his presidency under investigations, “then we’re going to do the same thing and government comes to a halt.”

Democrats, who retook the House majority in 2018 in large part because they pledged to block Trump’s agenda and launch the sweeping investigations the president rails against, see the investigation as a fulfillment of their own pledge to voters.

“Tonight, the President spoke about the honor of being in the House Chamber, and all the progress that has been achieved here,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “But at the same time, he threatened the United States Congress not to exercise its constitutional responsibility of oversight.”

In fact, the onslaught of Democratic investigations into potential misconduct and Trump’s controversial policies was set to kick into high gear barely 36 hours after the president left the House chamber.

Just this week, Democrats are preparing to hold hearings on Trump’s family separation policy along the U.S.-Mexico border and the possibility of releasing his tax returns. Friday will feature testimony from acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker regarding his oversight of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe and from Michael Cohen, the president’s longtime political and business fixer who is a central figure in the investigation.

Trump’s pleas for action on area of common ground like infrastructure, prescription drug pricing and ending the spread of HIV seemed aimed at centrist voters who have strayed from his orbit after two rollercoaster years. Yet his ability to fully reach across the aisle remains hampered by the ongoing battle over his efforts to secure funding for his signature campaign promise — the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico that Democrats have vowed to block.

And even as he attempted to outmaneuver Democrats, Trump is confronting his own party’s newfound willingness to stray from his orbit as lawmakers debate immigration legislation ahead of a Feb. 15 funding deadline. Wayward Republicans undercut Trump during the five-week government shutdown, and White House allies now acknowledge there is insufficient GOP support on Capitol Hill to sustain Trump through another shutdown fight.

Even in the hours before Trump took the rostrum, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell dropped his longstanding demand that the president first agree to sign any funding bill before he allows a vote on it. As Democratic and Republican negotiators met on Capitol Hill, McConnell said he hoped Trump would sign whatever compromise emerges.

White House allies acknowledge it would be foolish to expect Trump to hold fire in the face of those probes and refrain from name-calling and efforts to delegitimize the investigations. Still, the president’s allies hope voters will at least give Trump credit for trying to reach across the aisle.

“In a lot of ways this is the first campaign speech for 2020,” said Jason Miller, a former top Trump campaign communications aide. “This is the president’s opportunity to demonstrate his vision for the country and where he’d like to go, and also talk about his accomplishments over the last two years in a setting that is unique to the presidency.”

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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Catherine Lucey contributed.

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Zeke Miller has covered the White House and politics in Washington since 2011. Follow him at http://twitter.com/zekejmiller

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Trump preaches unity, accepts no blame for partisanship

February 6, 2019February 6, 2019

President Donald Trump turns to House speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., as he delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Face to face with emboldened Democrats, President Donald Trump called on Washington to cast aside “revenge, resistance and retribution” and end “ridiculous partisan investigations” in a State of the Union address delivered at a vulnerable moment for his presidency.

Trump appealed Tuesday night for bipartisanship but refused to yield on the hard-line immigration policies that have infuriated Democrats and forced the recent government shutdown. He renewed his call for a border wall and cast illegal immigration as a threat to Americans’ safety and economic security.

Trump accepted no blame for his role in cultivating the rancorous atmosphere in the nation’s capital, and he didn’t outline a clear path for collaborating with Democrats who are eager to block his agenda. Their opposition was on vivid display as Democratic congresswomen in the audience formed a sea of white in a nod to early 20th-century suffragettes.

Trump is staring down a two-year stretch that will determine whether he is re-elected or leaves office in defeat. His speech sought to shore up Republican support that had eroded slightly during the recent government shutdown and previewed a fresh defense against Democrats as they ready a round of investigations into every aspect of his administration.

“If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation,” he declared. Lawmakers in the cavernous House chamber sat largely silent.

Looming over the president’s address was a fast-approaching Feb. 15 deadline to fund the government and avoid another shutdown. Democrats have refused to acquiesce to his demands for a border wall, and Republicans are increasingly unwilling to shut down the government to help him fulfill his signature campaign pledge. Nor does the GOP support the president’s plan to declare a national emergency if Congress won’t fund the wall.

Wary of publicly highlighting those intraparty divisions, Trump made no mention of an emergency declaration in his remarks. He did offer a lengthy defense of his call for a border wall, declaring: “I will build it.” But he delivered no ultimatums about what it would take for him to sign legislation to keep the government open.

“I am asking you to defend our very dangerous southern border out of love and devotion to our fellow citizens and to our country,” he said, painting a dark and foreboding picture of the risks posed to Americans by illegal immigration.

The 72-year-old Trump harkened back to moments of American greatness, celebrating the moon landing as astronaut Buzz Aldrin looked on from the audience and heralding the liberation of Europe from the Nazis. He led the House chamber in singing happy birthday to a Holocaust survivor sitting with first lady Melania Trump.

“Together, we represent the most extraordinary nation in all of history. What will we do with this moment? How will we be remembered?” Trump said.

The president ticked through a litany of issues with crossover appeal, including boosting infrastructure, lowering prescription drug costs and combating childhood cancer. But he also appealed to his political base, both with his harsh rhetoric on immigration and a call for Congress to pass legislation to prohibit the “late-term abortion of children.”

Trump devoted much of his speech to foreign policy, another area where Republicans have increasingly distanced themselves from the White House. He announced details of a second meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, outlining a Feb. 27-28 summit in Vietnam.

Trump and Kim’s first summit garnered only a vaguely worded commitment by the North to denuclearize. But the president said his outreach to Pyongyang had made the U.S. safer.

“If I had not been elected president of the United States, we would right now, in my opinion, be in a major war with North Korea,” he said.

As he condemned political turmoil in Venezuela, Trump declared that “America will never be a socialist country” — a remark that may also have been targeted at high-profile Democrats who identify as socialists.

The president was surrounded by symbols of his emboldened political opposition. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was praised by Democrats for her hard-line negotiating during the shutdown, sat behind Trump as he spoke. And several senators running for president were also in the audience, including Sens. Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey.

Another Democratic star, Stacey Abrams, delivered the party’s response to Trump. Abrams narrowly lost her bid in November to become America’s first black female governor, and party leaders are aggressively recruiting her to run for U.S. Senate from Georgia.

Speaking from Atlanta, Abrams calls the shutdown a political stunt that “defied every tenet of fairness and abandoned not just our people, but our values.”

Trump’s address amounted to an opening argument for his re-election campaign. Polls show he has work to do, with his approval rating falling to just 34 percent after the shutdown, according to a recent survey conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

One bright spot for the president has been the economy, which has added jobs for 100 straight months.

“The only thing that can stop it,” he said, “are foolish wars, politics or ridiculous partisan investigations” — an apparent swipe at the special counsel investigation into ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign, as well as the upcoming congressional investigations.

The diverse Democratic caucus, which includes a bevy of women, sat silently for much of Trump’s speech. But they leapt to their feet when he noted there are “more women in the workforce than ever before.”

The increase is due to population growth — and not something Trump can credit to any of his policies.

The president also defended his decisions to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria and Afghanistan over the opposition from national security officials and many Republican lawmakers.

“Great nations do not fight endless wars,” he said, adding that the U.S. is working with allies to “destroy the remnants” of the Islamic State group and that he has “accelerated” efforts to reach a settlement in Afghanistan.

IS militants have lost territory since Trump’s surprise announcement in December that he was pulling U.S. forces out, but military officials warn the fighters could regroup within six months to a year of the Americans leaving. Several leading GOP lawmakers have sharply criticized his plans to withdraw from Syria, as well as from Afghanistan.

Trump’s guests for the speech included Alice Marie Johnson, a woman whose life sentence for drug offenses was commuted by the president, and Joshua Trump, a sixth-grade student from Wilmington, Delaware, who has been bullied over his last name. They sat with Mrs. Trump during the address.

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Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC and Catherine Lucey at http://twitter.com/catherine_lucey

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