they have had to abandon any defense of the substance of what the president did. they really can t defend it, so they instead tried to argue maybe it wasn t as bad as it seems. the white house has basically confessed to it being just as bad as it seemed, so that is no longer operative. what they ve evolved from thereafter what they evolved into thereafter was this argument about the process of impeachment, inside grass that has taken the form of republicans complaining how the committees have been taking depositions from witnesses in what room, and this cargument wy it s not okay for democrats to use closed doors for their depositions and why republicans can, there s an inverse ratio between the volume of which an
argument is made and the quality of its logic. but now tonight it really does appear we ve hit the end of the line for the republicans and for the trump white house in terms of trying to argue the impeachment inquiry away. you might remember earlier this month the white house said officially in writing that the trump white house refuses to recognize the legitimacy of impeachment. as the new york times put it in their headline the day the white house tried to pull this off, quote, white house declares war on impeachment. i mean, the basis of this claim from the trump white house was this sort of astonishing letter signed by the white house counsel, a letter to congress telling congress that the entire administration, the whole executive branch would be carrying on as if impeachment wasn t happening. they would not be responding to any document requests. they would not be allowing any witness from any point in any part of the administration to come forward and cooperate with
a long ruling. 75 pages from the federal court in washington but it rings clear as a bell. permit me. the department of justice claims that existing law bars disclosure. doj is wrong. in carrying out the weighty constitutional duty of determining whether impeachment of the president is warranted, congress need not redo the nearly two years of efforts spent on the special counsel investigation, nor do they need to risk being misled by witnesses who may have provided information to the grand jury and the special counsel that varies from what those witnesses may tell the judiciary committee. the committee s application for an order authorizing the release of certain grand jury materials related to the special counsel investigation is granted. so this is congress winning and the justice department, the position of the trump administration losing. and there s two major findings here. one is that the judge finds that the impeachment proceeding is a
house vote on impeachment inquiry, she would get a full house vote on it. it s weird they re arguing she must do it or it s not real. she said the argument in favor that it s not a real impeachment unless it s a real house vote, she said it s cherry picked an incomplete and more significantly, this so-called text has no textual support in the u.s. constitution or the governing rules of the house or rule 6e, which is the rule that concerns handing over grand jury materials to congress. more broadly, she says the white house has brought this on itself. quote, the white house s stated policy of non-cooperation with the impeachment inquiry weighs heavily in favor of disclosing these materials. congresses need to access grand jury material recentlevant to potential impeachment conduct by a president is heightened when the executive branch willfully obstructs channels for accessing
arguing that this isn t a real impeachment. that s going to be, that s no longer going to fly. it s no longer going to fly in congress but no longer going to try for the white house to use this as justification to try to block executive branch officials from testifying in response to duly authorized congressional subpoenas. the judge says, no, this is legal. this is a real impeachment. but on the substance, this also means all the redacted grand jury material from mueller s report is now turned over to congress and i mean, the judge does a good job pointing out some of that material and how it may be quite explosively related to the impeachment proceedings already under way. i don t want to put too fine a point on it because we ll see this stuff when we see it, but if you re only interested in what the impeachment committees will get on the sketchy dealings with ukraine, since that s the heart of what trump is impeached for, in volume i of the mueller