DOJ Uses Impeachment Confusion Against House Democrats In Dispute Over Mueller Grand Jury Material

DOJ Uses Impeachment Confusion Against House Democrats In Dispute Over Mueller Grand Jury Material

National Democrats are having a tough time.  They were blind-sided by President Trump’s 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton and haven’t yet managed to regain a sense of equilibrium.  They are still operating, to borrow a phrase from poker, on tilt.

Here’s the definition of tilt that best captures the Democrats since 2016:  “After a bad beat or an extended (real or imagined) downswing, you lose control over your game. You play too loosely because you are fuming.”  On tilt, one’s emotions take over, hubris and wildly ill-conceived decisions follow, and big losses are all but guaranteed.

We’ve seen this throughout the past three years in everything from the rabid #Resistance to the #MeToo movement to the Russian collusion hoax to pretty much every word uttered or printed by either Democrats or the leftstream media.

An activist writer at the Washington Post is stunned that he writes and writes about Orange Man Bad, yet Trump is still in office.  Meanwhile, activist anchors on CNN and MSNBC regaled the nation for two years with the “walls closing in” and the end being nigh for Trump.  They weren’t.  It wasn’t.

One of the best examples of the Democrats’ post-2016 “tilt” is their increasingly insane approach to impeachment.  They want Trump gone because Orange Bad Man.

They don’t know and can’t agree on exactly what grounds there are for impeachment, so we get garbled nonsense.  They haven’t uncovered an impeachable offense, so the “impeach him now” wing has settled on shouting that Trump has committed “crimes” and that he’s “guilty.” Of stuff.

This wing is also insistent that they are pursuing an “impeachment inquiry”/”formal impeachment proceeding.”  These are nebulous, invented terms that seem to mean pretty much what Maxine Waters said back in early 2017: the evidence is there, she felt it!, so they need an investigation to find the impeachable offense.  This seems to be mollifying the base.  A little bit.  For now.

The other wing is more pragmatic; this is the Pelosi wing that wants to beat Trump at the polls next November.  They want Trump gone, but they recognize that the witch hunt being offered by the “impeachment now” wing as red meat to the base is . . . just that.

It won’t fly with even moderate Democrats and will never fly with Republicans who still support Trump in record numbers.  They’re going along with this “impeachment inquiry” charade but are also distancing themselves from any actual talk of impeachment.

This tangled web of political hackery is about to implode on Democrats, however.  Not only is Nancy Pelosi stomping out of pressers rather than answering tough impeachment questions from the activist media (who want Trump impeached for any reason or, seemingly, for no reason if one can’t be found).  However, Democrats’ utter confusion on the issue is (ironically) stalling their phony “impeachment inquiry.”

House Democrats are attempting an already questionable move to access Grand Jury information, and their grounds for seeking it don’t seem to exist.

Politico explains in their piece entitled “DOJ cites Dems’ mixed-up impeachment messages to undercut House probe”:

The Justice Department on Friday flatly rejected House Democrats’ claim that they’re in the midst of an “impeachment investigation” into President Donald Trump, pointing to the scattershot messaging by Democratic leaders in recent days — even citing Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s reluctance to use the term at a news conference just a day ago.

In a new court filing on Friday, Justice Department lawyers argued that the House Judiciary Committee’s effort to obtain former special counsel Robert Mueller’s most sensitive secrets — evidence and testimony collected by a grand jury — should be denied, in part because House Democrats can’t agree on what to call their investigation.

“Most prominently, the speaker of the House has been emphatic that the investigation is not a true impeachment proceeding,” the lawyers wrote, citing Pelosi’s June statement that Democrats were “not even close” to such a move.

House Democrats’ attempt to access Mueller’s grand-jury information hinges on the courts acknowledging that they are conducting an impeachment investigation.

Since Democrats themselves can’t seem to acknowledge as one voice that they are conducting an impeachment investigation, courts may find it hard to do so, as well?

Further muddying the waters for Democrats is their own admission that they have no idea what outcome is likely from their blind-faith “impeachment inquiry.”

Politico continues:

. . . . The Judiciary Committee argued in late July that their impeachment investigation satisfies one of the exceptions to federal grand jury secrecy rules: that the House is engaged in an “impeachment investigation” and therefore is taking an action preliminary to a “judicial proceeding” — the Senate’s trial on whether to remove Trump from office.

But the Justice Department rebuffed that claim on Friday, citing inconsistent statements from senior Democratic leaders — as well as their own claims that the ongoing investigation might lead to innumerable outcomes other than an impeachment vote.

“The committee’s own description of its investigation makes clear that it is too far removed from any potential judicial proceeding to qualify,” the filing states.

“As the committee’s chairman has stressed—and as the speaker of the House and the House majority leader both reiterated this week—the purpose of its investigation is to assess numerous possible remedial measures, including censure, articles of impeachment, legislation, Constitutional amendments, and more,” it continues. “What may come of this investigation—if anything—remains unknown and unpredictable.”

So far, Democrats seem to have pulled off their schizophrenic impeachment messaging in which they tell the base one thing and the moderates another, but that is going to come to an explosive head when their cynical deception is revealed. And it will be.  Their base is following the hoax impeachment inquiry just as ardently as they tuned into the activist media’s constant coverage of the Russia collusion hoax.

Democrats don’t yet seem concerned about this, however, and maybe they needn’t be. After all, where is the base going to go?  Certainly not to Trump.  Instead, senior Democrats are reportedly more worried about how their disingenuous political hackery looks in court.

Politico continues:

Senior Democrats expressed concern this week that the lack of a unified message on impeachment could hurt their prospects in court, as they seek access to Mueller’s secret files and testimony from his key witnesses, which they say is necessary in order to determine whether Trump should be impeached.

Even if a judge determined that the House activities were close enough to a preliminary impeachment probe, the Justice Department’s lawyers went further, arguing that impeachment itself — and a removal trial in the Senate — would still fall short of an exception to grand jury secrecy.

“[I]mpeachment proceedings in Congress — including hypothetical removal proceedings in the Senate — are not ‘judicial proceedings’ under the plain and ordinary meaning of that term,” they wrote.

Who will be the scapegoat when all of this finally seeps through to the base?  Will Nadler be the new Mueller, once the hero to be and then the big disappointment?  Or will Pelosi feel the bite as the one who has (surprisingly) been the cool voice of reason on this issue?  Or maybe Democrats can make “the courts” the fall guy?

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