This part time gig of Congress works to trump’s distinct advantage. Members have baked in so damn much time off they ought to be cut to half pay and even then they make more than I did.
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House takes
A week in February
A week in March
2 weeks in April
A week in May
2 weeks in July
All of August
A week in September
2 weeks in October
2 weeks in November
And 2 weeks in December
The rest of the year they average 4 days a week in session voting on bills.
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So far, Mr. Nadler, they are indeed optional.
I’m not a lawyer so, don’t get caught up on my choice of words. Maybe “direction” would have been a better thing to say. The quote read to me like the judge was kind of saying, “C’mon Cummings, you can do better than this.”
I would love to hear from McGahn and see him respond to questions left unanswered by the Mueller report, but I think it’s not that simple. I think there is a legitimate issue of executive immunity here and McGahn has to let the process play out. That immunity does not extend to conversations with the President which constituted a crime or solicitation to commit a crime, and I expect any court that reviews this matter will so conclude. Much more difficult will be deciding what other matters are or are not protected by executive privilege and/or immunity. The privilege issue seems mostly or completely waived at this point, but not the immunity. McGahn could decide to come forward and testify without the issue of executive immunity being decided by a court, but I would think he could face professional discipline by the Bar for violating his ethical duties. He is in a tough spot but, of course, he has no one but himself to blame for that.
that’s not what Mehta was saying.
The passage of resolutions of this type is an anachronism — it dates back to the days when there were few standing committees and most did not have general subpoena power. Investigations were launched, and subpoena powers were authorized, through resolutions by the House that identified the scope and purpose when it assigned a specific investigation to a committee.
I do think you are right – that Cummings was being admonished – but only because the House did not come prepared to the hearing with a definitive statement of legislative purpose. Because of that, Mehta himself had to rummage around the record, finding bits and pieces in various letters that gave him the thin veneer of “legislative purpose” he needed to say that the subpoena met that particular test.
(he went even further, and provided two other “justifications” that made the subpoena enforceable – the emoluments thing (which involves a separate and distinct part of the constitution from "legislative powers) and the reference to impeachment. )
I think its Hillary… and Obama? .
Nadler is the Democratic Party’s very own Susan Collins, all bark and no bite.
By “think veneer” it appears that you think this wasn’t a good ruling. Ramos quoted the ruling and suggested that it was thorough. Do you think Ramos is creating a thin veneer, as well.
Asking seriously. I love the courtroom drama stuff, but I’m not a student of law.
no, I think it was a good ruling – the only possible ruling, given the applicable precedents.
what I was trying to say is that the House made Mehta’s job harder by never providing an actual specific legislative purpose for the subpoena.
Take for example – HR-1, a bill that was already passed by the House, but not by the Senate. The House used that bill in its arguments, and Mehta cited it as well.
But what does a bill that has ALREADY been written and passed by the House – but has not yet been put into law, have to do with a “legislative purpose?” Its not something the committee is considering action on – their action has already been taken. Nor is it something that the committee can provide “oversight” on, because it hasn’t been implemented, and there is nothing to “oversee”.
The best you can do for HR-1 is to say that committee is considering amending it and passing it again in the hope that the Senate will finally take up a different version of the bill.
And THAT is sufficient to justify the subpoena, because as Mehta noted, the courts have to PRESUME a valid legislative purpose for the subpoena. In other words, as long as the courts can make imagine a legitimate purpose, the subpoena is valid. Its a thin veneer, but its sufficient.
Mehta’s job would have been much easier if the House lawyers had said something like
“the committee is considering whether legislation is needed to provide firmer controls over accounting firms with regard to deceptive “financial statements” like the ones Mazar’s wrote for Donald Trump when he was trying to buy a baseball team. We need to know more about this practice to determine whether the “fine print disclaimers” used by Mazar’s to excuse the deceptive reports are sufficient to protect against fraudulent representations by their clients.”
That is the kind of clear, unambiguous statement of legislative purpose that Mehta was referring to when he cited the previous practice of resolutions. It would have made his job much easier. (Current House rules provide standing committees with subpoena power as a matter of course. This is not how it worked in the past — subpoena power was conferred by a House resolution pursuant to specific investigations, and those resolutions would state the purpose of the investigation.)
ETA: As for Ramos – in their submissions to the court, the Financial Services and Intelligence committees did a much better job of stating a “legislative purpose” than the Oversight Committee did in the Mazar’s case. I haven’t read the Ramos decision (can’t find a link – do you have one), but the applicable precedents were the same in both the Mazar’s and Deutsche Bank cases, so it makes a great deal of sense that he would refer to/rely on the Mehta decision in his own opinion.
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Thanks for the response. Very interesting and enlightening.
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by “interesting and enlightening,” I assume you mean “verbose and tendentious” 
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