Rachel Maddow (MSNBC) just this evening received written transcripts of Hope Hicks’s “testimony” in front of the House Committee on the Judiciary on Wednesday, June 19, 2019. Maddow read from these transcripts, showing how the lawyers representing Hicks (and the White House, and the Department of Justice, and others, 5 lawyers in all?) were objecting to any questions pertaining to Hicks’s service in the White House as part of the Trump Administration. The lawyers claimed, on Hicks’s behalf, something they called “absolute immunity” as the basis for these objections, and by immunity meaning that Hicks, in Trump’s legal opinion, did not have to answer the House Committee’s questions (which were made pursuant to a subpoena lawfully issued by the House Committee and served on Hicks).
The assumption, I think, based on Maddow’s coverage, was that the House Committee was, in proceeding to ask their questions and then hearing Hicks’s lawyers repeatedly say the word “objection,” that the House Committee was laying some kind of foundation upon which they would build arguments to be presented to “the Courts” in support of some kind of motion House Committee lawyers would bring, presumably at some point in the future, seeking judicial enforcement of the Committee’s subpoena.
The questions I have are: why is it up to the House Committee to bring motions for court orders to enforce the Committee’s subpoenas? Why couldn’t the Committee have politely suggested to Ms. Hicks that, if she chose to continue to refuse to answer their questions, she would be arrested immediately for being in contempt of Congress, and held in custody until she so complied? And so, if she so continued to refuse to answer the Committee’s questions, why couldn’t the Committee have then actually had her arrested and held in custody?
And if Hicks objected to being arrested, why couldn’t she and her many lawyers then waddle themselves down to the courthouse to stand in front of a judge to ask the courts for relief from the House Committee’s actions? Why shouldn’t they have the burden of making their arguments in support of their ridiculous assertions of “absolute immunity?” Why do they get to shift that burden of seeking judicial relief to the House?
Why can’t the House tear a page out of Trump’s reality-show script and simply do what House wants, and make Trump stop it?
Where is it written that it is Trump who always gets to do what he wants to do, when he wants to do it, and how he wants to do it, and if we don’t like it, then we have to figure out how to stop him?
Those are my questions.
One more: isn’t it better to have to ask for forgiveness than to have to ask for permission?
OK, one more: why isn’t it time for us to say “Damn the Torpedoes… FIRE!?”