At a closed door meeting on Monday night, members of the Democratic leadership team for the first time spoke up to repeatedly press Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to begin impeachment proceedings. While Pelosi resisted these efforts, The Washington Post reports that some members are near to “rebellion” on the subject of beginning an impeachment inquiry.
Democrats in the House have shown over and over that they respect Pelosi’s ability to muster support, plan strategy, and successfully move legislation. They not only overwhelmingly supported her in returning to the role of speaker, but have continually signaled support even when it seemed to many that the speakers’ approach to topics was overly cautious. But on the subject of impeachment, things may be coming to a boil; if Pelosi fails to take action, it could lead to a serious schism in Democratic leadership.
At the Monday night meeting, at least five members of the leadership team argued that an impeachment inquiry should be launched. Later that evening, after an exchange of letters with former White House Counsel Don McGahn, Judiciary chairman Jerry Nadler also called Pelosi to make the case for impeachment. But Pelosi, along with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, rejected both efforts.
Those arguing to begin an inquiry have been arguing that doing so would expand the power of Congress to seek information and to enforce its subpoenas. Last week, a team of legal experts called to testify before the Judiciary Committee repeatedly made the point that Congress can seek information during an impeachment inquiry that may go beyond its normal oversight authority and that both the subpoenas that have been issued to various parties, and the potential contempt citation against Attorney General William Barr would carry more weight with judges if they were in the context of an impeachment.
Despite this explanation from the Judiciary Committee members, Pelosi remained adamant that the House not begin such a proceeding, stating that many members did not support the action and that it might actually “undercut” investigations in the House.
Pelosi remains concerned that Democrats aren’t being seen as moving forward on a legislative agenda, and that actions like last week’s passage of the Equality Act are taking a backseat to talk of “corruption, Mueller’s report and impeachment.” But other membership team members argued that the best way to deal with this is simply to begin an inquiry, and replace multiple, overlapping investigations with one “streamlined” approach.
For members of the Judiciary Committee, who have been faced with the refusal to testify by key witnesses including Barr and former White House Counsel Don McGahn, opening an inquiry is beginning to seem the only way forward. Without that authority, the subpoenas they’ve issued are likely to be tied up on appeals that could easily last into the next election. And the repeated refusal of subpoenas by McGahn, complete with taunting letters from the White House and DOJ, along with Barr laughing about contempt of Congress to Pelosi’s face has the Judiciary Committee ready to take any action that would allow them to simply do their jobs.
As Democratic committee member Ted Deutch explained it, “If the answer [from the White House] is, ‘No, you can’t talk to anyone, you can’t have anything, we’re simply not going to cooperate,’ then at that point the only avenue that we have left is the constitutional means to enforce the separation of powers, which is a serious discussion of impeachment.”
However, despite the anger on his own committee and his own frustrations with McGahn, after a late night session with Pelosi, Jerry Nadler seemed to come down on her side of the line. Both Pelosi and McGahn pointed to the ruling on Monday in which a federal judge sided with the Oversight Committee on obtaining Donald Trump’s financial records as evidence that Congress hasn’t yet reached the end of its ability to seek information without going into impeachment.
Citing the Oversight committee’s victory, Pelosi argued that it wasn’t wise to take action that would interfere with the current investigations just when they’re making progress. “You want to tell Elijah Cummings to go home? … Today, we won our first case. We’ve been in this thing for almost five months, and now we’re getting some results . . . We still have unexhausted avenues here.”
But other members of leadership, who have spent those five months bumping against Trump’s refusal to provide testimony or documents, are finding that their patience is, in fact, pretty exhausted.