“House Democrats have wasted enough of America’s time with this charade,” White House counsel Pat Cipollone said in a scathing one-page letter to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., obtained by Fox News. “You should end this inquiry now and not waste even more time with additional hearings.”

PELOSI CALLS FOR ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT AGAINST TRUMP: ‘NO CHOICE BUT TO ACT’

Friday was the deadline for Trump to respond to Nadler’s request for participation in committee proceedings.

But instead of giving House Democrats a direct “no” answer, Cipollone penned a two-paragraph letter derailing the entire process.

“As you know, your impeachment inquiry is completely baseless and has violated basic principles of due process and fundamental fairness,” he wrote. “Nevertheless, the Speaker of the House yesterday ordered House Democrats to proceed with articles of impeachment before your Committee has heard a single shred of evidence.”

A senior administration official, though, made it clear they won’t be participating, telling Fox News: “We don’t see any reason to participate because the process is unfair. Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi has already announced the predetermined result. They will not give us the ability to call any witnesses.”

Nadler is set to continue hearings in the committee on Monday.

The decision by the administration likely accelerates the pace of impeachment.

In 1998, the Clinton Administration took 30 hours to present its side of things to the Judiciary Committee. That means there may not be another hearing after Monday’s session.

Trump telegraphed Thursday he wanted to sidestep the House impeachment process and move quickly to the Senate where he believes he’ll be acquitted by the GOP-led upper chamber.

“Therefore I say, if you are going to impeach me, do it now, fast, so we can have a fair trial in the Senate and so that our Country can get back to business,” Trump tweeted. “We will have Schiff, the Bidens, Pelosi and many more testify, and will reveal, for the first time, how corrupt our system really is.”

Cipollone repeated Trump’s comments in the letter and said the House Democrats would be making a historically unjust mistake by plowing forward.

“Adopting articles of impeachment would be a reckless abuse of power by House Democrats, and would constitute the most injust, highly partisan and unconstitutional attempt at impeachment in our Nation’s history,” he said.

Trump and his allies in Congress have dismissed the impeachment as a “sham” partisan exercise aimed at undoing the results of the 2016 presidential election. Trump says his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “perfect” when he asked the newly elected foreign leader to investigate the Bidens and the Democratic National Committee server.

Pelosi, however, said the facts of Trump’s wrongdoing involving Ukraine are “uncontested” and announced Thursday Democrats are plowing forward with drafting articles of impeachment against Trump.

“The president abused his power for his own personal political benefit at the expense of our national security,” Pelosi said.

WHITE HOUSE, IN FIERY LETTER, DECLARES TRUMP WON’T PARTICIPATE IN HOUSE JUDICIARY IMPEACHMENT HEARING

Trump declined to have his lawyers participate in the House Judiciary Committee’s first impeachment hearing Wednesday when four legal scholars debated whether Trump’s conduct was impeachable.

Cipollone blasted the “baseless and highly partisan inquiry” in a letter Sunday declining to attend. The White House also accused the Judiciary Committee of “purposely” scheduling its first impeachment hearing when Trump would be meeting with NATO leaders in London and couldn’t attend.

At Wednesday’s hearing, the three lawyers the Democrats invited made the case that Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine for personal political purposes and his stonewalling of Congress are impeachable. The lone GOP witness, George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley, said Trump’s call was “anything but perfect” but said Democrats haven’t made the case.

“One can oppose President Trump’s policies or actions but still conclude that the current legal case for impeachment is not just woefully inadequate, but in some respects, dangerous, as the basis for the impeachment of an American president,” Turley said.

Nadler, D-NY,  had set a deadline of 5 p.m Friday in a letter he penned to the president a week ago.

“I am writing to determine if your counsel will seek to exercise the specific privileges set forth in the Judiciary Committee’s Impeachment Procedures … and participate in the upcoming impeachment proceedings,” Nadler wrote in the Nov. 29 letter.

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Nadler scheduled the next impeachment hearing for 9 a.m. on Monday, where lawyers for Democrats and Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee will present their evidence.

Fox News’ Chad Pergram contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-responds-to-impeachment-deadline-i

The post White House won’t participate in impeachment hearings, tells Nadler to ‘end this inquiry now’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The five-page letter came as the Democratic majority on the House Intelligence Committee was preparing to approve a report on Tuesday that will outline possible charges of bribery or “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the constitutional standard for impeachment. After receiving the report, the Judiciary Committee would prepare actual charges.

“This baseless and highly partisan inquiry violates all past historical precedent, basic due process rights, and fundamental fairness,” wrote White House counsel Pat Cipollone, continuing the West Wing’s attack on the procedural form of the impeachment proceedings. Cipollone said Nadler provided only “vague” details about the hearing, and that unnamed academics — and not “fact witnesses” — would apparently be attending.

“As for the hearing scheduled for December 4, we cannot fairly be expected to participate in a hearing while the witnesses are yet to be named and while it remains unclear whether the Judiciary Committee will afford the president a fair process through additional hearings,” Cipollone said. “More importantly, an invitation to an academic discussion with law professors does not begin to provide the President with any semblance of a fair process. Accordingly, under the current circumstances, we do not intend to participate in your Wednesday hearing.”

He continued: “When the Judiciary Committee scheduled a similar hearing during the Clinton impeachment process, it allowed those questioning the witnesses two-and-a-half weeks’ notice to prepare, and it scheduled the hearing on a date suggested by the president’s attorneys. Today, by contrast, you have afforded the president no scheduling input, no meaningful information and so little time to prepare that you have effectively denied the administration a fair opportunity to participate. …

READ THE FULL WHITE HOUSE LETTER

Cipollone’s letter made clear that his response applied only to the Wednesday hearing, at least for now. Cipollone demanded more information from Democrats on how they intended to conduct further hearings before Trump would decide whether to participate in those hearings, amid sagging national support for Democrats’ probe.

Specifically, Cipollone demanded to know whether Republicans would be able to cross-examine and call their own fact witnesses, including House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. (AP)

House-passed rules provide the president and his attorneys the right to cross-examine witnesses and review evidence before the committee, but little ability to bring forward witnesses of their own.

“If [Schiff] chooses not to (testify), then I really question his veracity in what he’s putting in his report,” said Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee. “It’s easy to hide behind a report,” Collins added. “But it’s going to be another thing to actually get up and have to answer questions.”

Schiff has come under scrutiny from Republicans, in part because of his overtly partisan comments and his previous claim in a televised interview that “we have not spoken directly with the whistleblower.” A Schiff spokesperson later narrowed that claim in October, telling Fox News that Schiff himself “does not know the identity of the whistleblower, and has not met with or spoken with the whistleblower or their counsel” for any reason.

STATE DEPT OFFICIAL TESTIFIES THAT HE FLAGGED BIDEN CONFLICT OF INTEREST ISSUES — BUT WAS TOLD NOW’S NOT THE TIME 

An aide to Schiff insisted that when Schiff mentioned “we” had not spoken to the whistleblower, he was referring to members of the full House intelligence committee, rather than staff. NBC National Security reporter Ken Dilanian flagged Schiff’s explanation as “deceptive” late Wednesday, and Schiff acknowledged he “should have been more clear” concerning whistleblower contacts.

The panel of constitutional scholars who will testify on Wednesday will weigh in on the question of whether the president committed an impeachable offense by allegedly withholding of military aid to Ukraine until it investigated former Vice President Joe Biden.

During impeachment hearings last month, a career State Department official testified that in January or February 2015, he “became aware that [Joe Biden’s son] Hunter Biden was on the board” of Ukrainian company Burisma Holdings while his father Joe Biden was overseeing Ukraine policy as vice president — and that he raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest at the time. Joe Biden has openly bragged about pressuring Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor by threatening to withhold $1 billion in critical U.S. aid., all while Burisma was under scrutiny.

Republicans had urged President Trump not to attend the Democrats’ hearings, arguing that his presence would validate a process they have repeatedly derided as partisan.  In his letter, Cipollone repeatedly derided what he called Democrats’ “fundamentally unfair” process.

“Inviting the Administration now to participate in an after-the-fact constitutional law seminar — with yet-to-be-named witnesses — only demonstrates further the countless procedural deficiencies that have infected this inquiry from its inception and shows the lack of seriousness with which you are undertaking these proceedings,” Cipollone wrote.

Nadler had written the president last week announcing a hearing for Dec. 4 at 10 a.m., and notified him of the committee’s intentions to provide him with “certain privileges” while they consider “whether to recommend articles of impeachment to the full House.” Nadler also extended an invitation to the president, asking whether “you and your counsel plan to attend the hearing or make a request to question the witness panel.”

With polls showing support for impeachment flagging, Democrats were aiming for a final House vote by Christmas, which would set the stage for a likely Senate trial in January.  Surveys have shown that independents are souring on the idea of impeaching and removing Trump from office, including in critical battleground states like Wisconsin, even as House Democrats aggressively presented their focus-group-tested “bribery” case against the president over the past two weeks.

“I do believe that all evidence certainly will be included in that report so the Judiciary Committee can make the necessary decisions that they need to,” said Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., a member of both the Intelligence and Judiciary committees.

She said Democrats had not yet finalized witnesses for the upcoming Judiciary hearings and were waiting to hear back from Trump on his plans to present a defense.

“If he has not done anything wrong, we’re certainly anxious to hear his explanation of that,” Demings said.

The House Judiciary’s impeachment hearings will follow last month’s hearings by the House Intelligence Committee, which heard from 12 witnesses during five days of testimony.

Trump has previously suggested that he might be willing to offer written testimony under certain conditions, though aides suggested they did not anticipate Democrats would ever agree to them.

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“The Democrats are holding the most ridiculous Impeachment hearings in history. Read the Transcripts, NOTHING was done or said wrong!” Trump tweeted Saturday.

Late Sunday, Trump tweeted a link to a Fox News opinion piece written by legal analyst Gregg Jarrett, and quoted the piece as saying the president had done “nothing impeachable.”

Fox News’ Brooke Singman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/white-house-says-trump-wont-participate-in-judiciary-hearing

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Democrats set a Tuesday deadline for Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Giuliani and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to turn over documents related to Ukraine.

Three House committees also requested Vice President Pence hand over documents by Tuesday, though no subpoena had been issued.

The refusals from top administration officials were unsurprising after the White House counsel’s office sent a letter to top Democrats last week making clear that the administration would refuse to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry.

Matthew Morgan, counsel to the vice president, wrote in a letter to the three committee chairmen that Pence would not comply with their request, citing the lack of a vote establishing formal procedures for the impeachment inquiry and questioning the fairness of the process.

A letter from Giuliani’s lawyer to the House Intelligence Committee dismissed the subpoena, saying it is “overbroad, unduly burdensome, and seeks documents beyond the scope of legitimate inquiry.”

The Pentagon said in a letter to the three committee leaders that it has taken steps to identify and preserve potentially relevant documents, but that the subpoena “raises a number of legal and practical concerns” and the department would not comply “at this time.”

A senior administration official said that OMB and acting Director Russ Vought “are not participating in the sham impeachment process.”

House Democrats could move to hold those defying the subpoenas in contempt, though it is unlikely the Justice Department would prosecute them.

Democrats are leading an impeachment inquiry into whether Trump abused his office when he urged Ukraine to look into Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden during a July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president.

As part of the investigation, the Oversight and Reform, Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees are seeking documents and communications among administration officials related to the call, as well as documents pertaining to the administration’s handling of military aid for Ukraine.

White House counsel Pat Cipollone wrote in a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) last week that the administration would refuse to cooperate with requests for documents and communications, decrying the impeachment inquiry as an “invalid” effort to “overturn the results of the 2016 election.”

Cipollone argued in his letter that the House had yet to hold a vote on the impeachment inquiry and therefore the White House did not have to comply with their requests.

It’s unclear whether such a vote would change the White House’s stance. Trump has said he would cooperate if the established rules for the investigation were “fair.”

Democrats have also issued subpoenas to Energy Secretary Rick Perry and indicted Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman as part of their investigation.

In recent days, a host of current and former administration officials have testified privately to the House committees leading the impeachment inquiry, alleging that Giuliani and others were conducting a shadow influence campaign in Ukraine that undermined official channels.

Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/465973-white-house-pentagon-giuliani-reject-impeachment-subpoenas

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