Trump and Cipollone’s Made-Up Defense of Stonewalling Is a Fraud
Donald Trump’s sweeping attempt to prevent witnesses from testifying before the House committees conducting impeachment inquiries is an act of lawlessness. Full stop.
In theory, there’s nothing wrong about a president pushing back against congressional encroachments into legitimately perceived executive authority.
But there’s a difference between protecting executive turf and stonewalling.
And Trump has crossed that line, by a mile.
(. . .)
Cipollone’s legal argument, such as it is, has two prongs:
(1) The inquiry is “constitutionally invalid” because the full House hasn’t voted to authorize it; and
(2) The inquiry violates Trump’s due process rights to cross-examine witnesses, call witnesses, and present evidence.
This “constitutional-validity” argument is simply made up.
There is nothing whatsoever in the U.S. Constitution requiring the full House to vote on an impeachment inquiry (as opposed to passing articles of impeachment), and Cipollone doesn’t cite a single provision of the Constitution—or even a single statute, or court decision, or even a dodgy law-review article in support of his proposition.
(. . .)
The due process argument is just as bad.
Cipollone understandably cites no authority of any kind in support of an argument that the target of an impeachment investigation has due process rights to call and cross-examine witnesses or present evidence during the
investigation phase of the inquiry (as opposed, of course, to the
trial phase, should the inquiry ever reach that point).
