call evidence. he is the author of how to get rid of a president. and katrina mulligan who represented the doj in the national security council process and now works at the center for american progress. david, what do you see as significant and what unfolded today? what we see is the president s team trying to throw everything at the wall to see what sticks. that s not new. what s new is that it s escalated. now it s an official white house letter saying all of impeachment is invalid, you can t do this. but they have a fundamental problem, which is it s in the constitution. this is a legitimate function of congress. and trying to say that the entire inquiry is invalid doesn t really hold water, at best it s a stalling tactic. the other thing is politically how the white house is leaving republicans out to dry, because guess what, you re trying to say at the heart of this is something that s not a pamela, there was no quid pro quo, this was okay to do.
cooperate with this impeachment investigation until the speaker holds an official floor vote as we heard there, leader make c it might look like the shrug emoji. there s no rule that says the house has to do a formal vote to continue what they re doing on impeachment, if and when there are articles of impeachment to be voted on that s a separate step. there is precedent here, the bill clinton impeachment, there was a formal vote to start that process. that s what house republicans are calling for. house democrats look at that and say this is essentially a stalling tactic. this is a process argument. and that it s not especially relevant. and house democrats have actually said as much, adam schiff and speaker pelosi had said in their news conference last week that being nonresponsive to subpoenas they re not really interested in having a months long legal
more information about the inspector general is going to talk to congressional staff members in this briefing. when the news came down yesterday, it was surprising. people on capitol hill were caught off guard saying it was highly unusual. saying this cryptic message from the state department ig was p strange. potentially there are documents related to the state department and the ukraine. one of the things we ve been watching is how quickly the developments is coming. it s different than investigations we ve been watching for months. yesterday mike pompeo was saying congressional leaders were bullying members of his department. democrats fired back saying it s another stalling tactic. we ve seen this before. they are trying to move as
back from the g-7, the point at which you would assume you are pressuring your allies to put forth more aid he still didn t unfreeze this. we re four months after this mysterious policy review and when you talk to the office of management and budget and d.o.d., they did not understand why this review was ordered or even what this review entailed and this raises suspicion that this could have been a stalling tactic and it was politically motivated on the part of the president. the president trying to hold back the aid until the president of ukraine does what he wants him to do. exactly. we saw from the phone call which happened in july that the president of the ukraine brings up the potential of defense assistance and thanks the u.s. for everything they ve done and the president said well i have a favor to ask you. we are learning about two dates from the whistle-blower complaint that are now checking out. what is that. it is interesting because we saw the president again attack
so-called russia dossier has agreed to meet with investigators within weeks. that is according to the newspaper, the times. think about that for a half second, just a second. the justice department is investigating the investigators. at the president s request. while the president is refusing to let his own people cooperate with investigations. we ve said it before. irony is dead. and speaking of a subpoena battle, there is the showdown today between the house judiciary chairman, jerry nadler, and the doj. the justice department offering to turn over a limited set of documents. but not the full, unredacted mueller report. if the committee scraps a vote next week to hold william bar in contempt. so basically, that s a stalling tactic. nadler s response, calling their bluff. as things stand now, the contempt vote is on for today.