A "Dear Colleague" letter penned Sunday by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggests that a woman known for her iron grip on her caucus is at least starting to feel a tinge of heat. Pelosi effectively drew a line in the sand regarding the upcoming testimony on Thursday from Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire about an urgent whistleblower complaint he has been withholding from Congress.
"At that time, we expect him to obey the law and turn over the whistleblower’s full complaint to the Committee," Pelosi wrote of the disclosure concerning Donald Trump and his alleged attempt to bully Ukraine into investigating a political opponent. "We also expect that he will establish a path for the whistleblower to speak directly to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees as required by law."
But Pelosi fell short on relaying exactly what the consequences would be if the DNI failed to disclose the relevant information except to say that the Trump Administration would be "entering a grave new chapter of lawlessness which will take us into a whole new stage of investigation."
Pelosi's letter came after a weekend in which progressive congressional members leveled blistering criticism at the oversight failures of both their own caucus and, by extension, Pelosi. Tennessee Rep. Steven Cohen, a member of the Judiciary Committee said he thought Democrats should be holding uncooperative members of the administration in "inherent contempt," a practice involving potentially fining or jailing people that hasn't been used for a century or more.
“Our side says it’s ‘legally questionable,’ ‘it hasn’t been used in forever,’ and ‘blah, blah, blah,’ ” Cohen told the Washington Post. "I say do it. [...] Let them argue in court that they take the position that it’s legally questionable. We back off of everything! We’ve been very weak.” Amen.
Liberal firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York tweeted her own discontent Saturday night, suggesting that Democratic inaction was an inexcusable failure. “At this point, the bigger national scandal isn’t the president’s lawbreaking behavior — it is the Democratic Party’s refusal to impeach him for it,” she wrote. "It is one thing for a sitting president to break the law. It’s another to let him. . . . The GOP’s silence & refusal to act shouldn’t be a surprise. Ours is.”
California Rep. Jared Huffman was even more terse, tweeting, “I’m sick of the parsing, dithering & political overcalculating. We are verging on tragic fecklessness.”
But the internal consternation does seem to be affecting some of the members who have posed the biggest roadblocks to impeachment. House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff, a Pelosi ally, told CNN Sunday that impeachment might ultimately be Democrats' only option despite the fact that he hasn't favored it in the past. "If the president is essentially withholding military aid at the same time that he is trying to browbeat a foreign leader into doing something illicit that is providing dirt on his opponent during a presidential campaign, then that may be the only remedy that is coequal to the evil that that conduct represents,” Schiff said on State of the Union.
Schiff's movement is noteworthy. He and Pelosi reportedly coordinated on talking points over the weekend. But notably, almost every Democrat—even those who support an impeachment inquiry—qualifies their statements with "if," as Schiff did above. Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, a member of the Judiciary panel and fervent supporter of impeachment, was no different. “If the evidence indeed shows that the president again betrayed the national interest by placing his personal political agenda in front of the rule of law and the interests of the American people, that is easily reducible to an article of impeachment,” Raskin told the Washington Post's Greg Sargent.
If getting the evidence is a requisite precursor to opening an inquiry, Democrats will spend the next several months or more chasing their own tails. Both the White House counsel and Attorney General William Barr's Justice Department have had a hand if finding reasons for acting DNI Maguire to withhold the information from Congress. He will almost surely stonewall again on Thursday and, to date, the Democrats have proven completely incapable of getting the Trump administration to turn over information critical to their many ongoing inquiries.
In effect, nearly all of those efforts have wound up in the courts with no end in sight. Opening an impeachment inquiry backed by the full weight of the House is the surest way to make certain that Democrats prevail in the courts and in short order. It would also put Republicans and the White House alike on notice that Democrats are finally feeling a sense of urgency—a development that frankly would be long overdue.
When Pelosi, Chairman Schiff, and House Democrats return to Washington Tuesday, they will have an opportunity to plan for Maguire's Thursday appearance before the House Intelligence panel. His disposition and their response will be a make-or-break moment for House Democrats to prove to the American people that they are serious about their oversight responsibilities and holding the most lawless president in American history to account. As Schiff said, impeachment may be the only remedy "coequal to the evil" Trump has brought to the Oval Office.
Click here for more coverage of the whistleblower complaint and the impeachment inquiry.