Whatever Speaker Nancy Pelosi says, the House is not actually in the midst of an official impeachment inquiry, a key Republican told a federal judge Thursday, undercutting Democrats’ demands to get a peek at secret grand jury information they believe will expose President Trump.
Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said if the whole House were to vote to begin an impeachment inquiry, that would be one thing.
But Democrats have been reluctant to do that.
Instead, Mrs. Pelosi has unilaterally declared one, and the House Judiciary Committee has voted to approve various investigations, and they’ve asked a federal judge to release grand jury information to them as part of that move.
Neither step is sufficient, Mr. Collins argued.
“An impeachment inquiry was authorized, in explicit terms, but the full House in the two previous cases where presidents were impeached,” Mr. Collins wrote in his brief. “Indeed, in the [Judiciary] Committee’s 206-year history, the committee has never reported articles of impeachment against a president without first conducting an impeachment proceeding authorized by a full House vote.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the minority leader, sent a letter to Mrs. Pelosi saying she’s bungled the whole process. He urged her to suspend her impeachment push until she comes up with a firm plan.
He said she must answer whether she’ll hold a full House vote, must say what powers the GOP minority will have in any investigation and must decide what role Mr. Trump’s legal team will have in attending hearings, cross-examining witnesses or gaining access to evidence.
“By answering ’no’ to any of the above, you would be acting in direct contradiction to all modern impeachment inquiries of a sitting president,” Mr. McCarthy, California Republican, wrote.
Republicans say there are two different investigative powers given to Congress.
Lawmakers have an oversight power, which comes from Article I of the Constitution and is used to further their ability to write legislation. But courts have held that power is limited.
Impeachment is found in Article II of the Constitution, and has been considered a judicial proceeding — the House’s articles of impeachment are a political indictment, and the Senate sits in judgment as jurors at a trial.
As a judicial proceeding, the courts have granted impeachment inquiries broader latitude to explore, including perhaps the ability to see information gleaned by a grand jury, which under normal rules is secret.
Mr. Collins says Congress has every right to take that step and launch an inquiry, but it can’t be done on the cheap, and lawmakers must be willing to stand up and cast a vote in favor of it — and suffer any political repercussions for it.
Mrs. Pelosi on Wednesday rejected the idea of a vote.
“There’s no requirement that there be a floor vote,” she said. “That’s not anything that is excluded.
Yet she also suggested it would be a winnable vote were she to schedule it — and could even draw bipartisan support.
“There’s some Republicans that are very nervous about our bringing that vote to the floor,” she said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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