TODAY IN CONGRESS (C-SPAN TV SCHEDULE) & More:
THERE BACK!
I am posting the daily C-Span TV schedule, when I can, for those here who may be interested in tuning in to see what Congress is up to. Also, I have provided the results of the previous day’s votes on some significant Bills/Resolutions, when Congress was in session the previous day. Lastly, I have provided an update on the status of numerous Congressional Subpoenas and other Committee action.
Here’s today’s schedule with the events I think may be the most interesting in bold. You can watch C-Span HERE. NOTE: Sometimes C-Span posts additional Congressional events not on my list, later in the day.
House:
2:00 pm — House Judiciary Hearing on Lessons from Mueller Report (Former White House Counsel John Dean as well as former U.S. attorneys and legal experts testify about lessons learned from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report.)
2:00 pm — House Session (The House meets first for general speeches. Members will then consider several homeland security-related bills under suspension of the rules.)
5:00 pm — House Rules Committee Votes on Barr and McGahn Subpoenas (House Rules Committee debates and votes on a resolution that authorizes the Judiciary Committee chair to pursue enforcement of subpoenas for Attorney General Barr and former White House Counsel Don McGahn.)
Senate:
3:00 pm — Senate Session (The Senate will resume debate on the nomination of Ryan Holte to be a judge for a fifteen year term on the U.S. Court of Federal Claims which hears monetary claims cases against the U.S. government.)
Yesterday’s Votes:
House: No votes in the House since last week’s post.
Senate: No votes in the Senate since last week’s post.
Comments:
Today’s Events –
House — Believe it or not, the House is working on a Monday, with some very significant committee action on tap for today.
First up is the Judiciary Committee who will convene the first significant testimonial hearing on the Mueller Report. They will start the ball rolling by hearing testimony from John Dean (Former Nixon White House Counsel) who will likely put an historic perspective on the Mueller Report with many comparisons to Watergate. He will likely provide an enfactic statements on how much Trump deserve impeachment and cite several examples why its worse than Watergate. This will help drive up the pressure on Pelosi a bit which is probably Chairman Nadler’s underlying motive in holding these historic Hearings. Still, I think and I hope that Dean is just one of the warm up acts for testimony from Mueller and maybe even McGahn not too far down the road.
Second up is the House Rules Committee who will meet later today to set the rules for the floor debate and vote on resolutions to hold AG Barr and former White House Counsel Don McGahn in Contempt of Congress for their failure to respond to Congressional Subpoenas. The measures, would also authorize House lawyers to seek enforcement of those subpoenas in court. These resolutions do not involve Inherent Contempt in that they do not threaten Barr or McGahn with Congressional arrest and detention. However, I think they will allow Congressional lawyers to seek civil fines against both Barr and McGahn personally. My opinion is that Barr will fight this as far as he can in court, but McGahn may be another story. McGahn may be looking for a court decision against him in order to comply with his subpoena, so that he can use it as a shield against White House attacks. Anyway, I have to assume the Committee will set a closed rule so that Republicans cannot muck things up and drag things out with amendments. Look for a Full House vote on both of these resolutions tomorrow.
Senate — The senate nomination confirmation machine rolls on!
Other Events — SUBPOENA WARS —
House Judiciary Committee Barr Subpoena — AG William Barr continues to ignore the House Judiciary Committee’s subpoena for the un-redacted Mueller Report and all supporting documents. As noted above, the Rules Committee will be voting on sending a Barr Contempt Citation to the the Full House for a vote tomorrow. More Details are provided by this CBS News Report.
House Judiciary Committee McGahn Subpoena — Also, as noted above, the Rules Committee will be voting on sending a McGahn Contempt Citation to the the Full House for a vote tomorrow for defying congressional a subpoena to testify and produce documents. More Details are provided by this CBS News Report.
House Judiciary Committee Mueller Testimony — The Committee is still in negotiations with Mueller’s team about his testimony. However, as discussed above, the committee will hear testimony this week from former U.S. attorneys and legal experts, including John Dean, a Trump critic and former White House counsel to President Richard Nixon who served a year in prison in connection with the Watergate scandal. My hope is that this will set the stage for Mueller’s testimony or maybe its just to give us something to watch while the Mueller negotiations drag on.
House Judiciary Committee Hicks and Donaldson Subpoenas — No Change. The House Judiciary Committee voted to subpoena both Hope Hicks (President Trump’s former long time personal adviser) and Anne Donaldson (Don McGahn’s former Chief of Staff) a few weeks ago. According to Politico, the subpoenas call on both women to produce requested documents by June 4. Then they are scheduled to testify with Hicks on June 19 and Donaldson on June 24. They have both been told by the White House to not respond and so far they have not. They missed the documentary deadline of June 4, so now my guess is the Committee is waiting to see if they are “no shows on June 24 before taking further action to enforce these subpoenas.
House Intelligence Committee Subpoena — No Change. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) postponed a meeting to take “enforcement action” against the Justice Department after it agreed to turn over documents related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Schiff said that the department has agreed to turn over 12 categories of counterintelligence and foreign intelligence materials. So we are waiting to see what the Committee will do after it reviews the documents from Barr.
House Financial Services Committee and House Intelligence Committee Deutsche Bank and Capital One Subpoenas (Trump’s Banking Records) — No change. A federal judge ruled from the bench and rejected President Trump's effort to block congressional subpoenas seeking his financial records from Deutsche Bank and Capital One. But the Trump Organization has filed an Appeal. The appeals court said Friday it will speedily consider President Donald Trump’s challenge to congressional subpoenas seeking financial records from two banks with which he did business. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan issued a brief order setting a schedule for written arguments to be submitted by July 18, with oral arguments to soon follow.
House Oversight and Reform Committee Subpoena (Financial Records) — No change. A three-judge panel on the appeals court will hear oral arguments on July 12 to determine whether the accounting firm Mazars can hand over Trump's financial records to House Democrats. The court also set a series of deadlines spanning June and July for parties to submit filings arguing their positions in the case.
House Oversight and Reform Committee Subpoena (NEW) — According to this AOL Report,
“House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings said Friday his panel will vote next week on holding Attorney General Bill Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt after the pair of top Trump administration officials failed to cooperate with a probe into adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
"We gave Attorney General Barr and Secretary Ross every opportunity to produce the documents the Committee needs for our investigation, but rather than cooperate, they have decided that they would rather be held in contempt of Congress," Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, said in a statement.
"They produced none of the documents we asked for, they made no counter-offers regarding these documents, and they seem determined to continue the Trump Administration's cover-up," he added.
Cummings' committee had, in April, issued subpoenas for documents related to an investigation into the Trump's administration's efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
The subpoena was for all 2017 documents, both from within the Department of Justice and with outside entities, regarding the administration's request to add a citizenship question to the census. That list included a memo from James Uthmeier, who served as an attorney to Ross, to John Gore, deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department in the fall of 2017.
The deadline to comply with subpoenas was Thursday.”
House Ways & Means Committee Subpoena (Trump’s Tax Returns) — We are waiting for the Committee to enforce its subpoena against Mnuchin and the IRS, and get this dispute into Court. We are also waiting for Governor Cuomo to sign the Bill allowing NYS to provide NYS tax returns of Federal or State government officials to House Committee Chairman (McNeal) upon his request (including Trump’s NYS returns). However, Chairman McNeal announced last week that he will NOT request Trump’s State Tax Returns. What! According to this Common Dreams' Report,
“Neal fears that attempting to obtain the president's state tax returns "would bolster Trump administration arguments that Congress is on a political fishing expedition."
"Richard Neal would be the only Democrat allowed by the new law to ask for the documents," Bloomberg reported, "but so far he has said he won't do it."
Neal's refusal to pursue Trump's New York returns—which could contain similar information to the president's federal tax returns—sparked anger from progressive activists and lawmakers, who argued the Ways and Means chairman should be using all of the power at his disposal to investigate Trump's potential financial conflicts.”
Neal’s problem is likely based on his desire not to taint his case for obtaining Trump’s Federal Returns. The law which says the President (or anyone for that matter) shall turn over his returns to the House Committee is based on the need for Congress to establish legislation to regulate the IRS in its enforcement role. Neal is afraid that getting Trump’s State returns may bolster Trump’s case in Federal Court that the request for Trump’s tax returns is a political vendetta and not a legislative one. Personally, I think he is being overly cautious, but he can always get Trump’s State returns later if by some highly unlikely scenario he loses in Federal Court.
I hope my little continuing Subpoena Wars feature helps you all keep track of things. While the media seems to portray the Dems. as doing nothing and letting Trump get a way with everything, I have found just the opposite. There is so much going on that we literally need a scorecard to keep track of it all. I hope my feature is that scorecard.
Thanks for Reading! If you like this series, please tell a few friends.
Monday, Jun 10, 2019 · 7:30:24 PM +00:00
·
Doctor Who
UPDATE: First, THANKS ALL for the Rec. List. Glad you enjoy reading these posts.
As some of you have already read by now (see Kerry's FP Post), Nadler has reached some sort of deal with DoJ to turn over to the House Judiciary Committee some apparently important portions of the redacted portion of the Mueller Report and some underlying documents. So the proceedings to hold Barr in contempt are on hold.
However, it does not appear the same is true for McGahn. We will have to watch to see what the Rules Committee does with McGahn during their meeting which C-Span still has scheduled for 5:00 pm today.