This Week in Impeachment

John Bolton on the schedule (but will he show up?) and more! What happened last week, what’s happening this week, have we been dead the whole time?

Since Splinter isn’t here to guide (yank) us through this, I’m going to try to briefly keep everyone up to date on this storyline in our nation’s great pageant.

Here is a very handy visual guide from CNN, which is helpful to keep track of the players and testimonies. I am relying heavily on it, though if anyone has a better resource for this info, I’m all ears (or eyes? Eyes).

The House is not in session this week but things are still happening!

Where are we at?

Last week, the House took an important vote that sets the rules for the impeachment process. I wrote more about it back in the old days of last week when I still got on Kinja. (Edit – since that’s now about to go the way of the dinosaurs, at the very bottom of this post I’ll quote the relevant section of that post, in case it is down by the time you read this).

• .White House adviser Alexander Vindman (a well respected military type person who was on The Phonecall) testified a lot of fucking damning shit, including that the White House tried to obscure and hide official shit from the record of The Phonecall, and that previous resistance hero testifier Bill Taylor was pretty much totally right. He also is the second person to tell us all the Gordon Sondland is a lying piece of shit.
• State Department Ukraine Expert Catherine Croft’s testimony corroborated reports of lobbying efforts and pressure to get previous Ukraine Amabassador Marie Yovanovitch fired.
• State Department official Christopher Anderson testified that the White House blocked a public condemnation of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, as well as that John Bolton was real fucking concerned about Rudy Guililigalnalignalgini.
• State Department official Philip Reeker testified that ousting Yovanovitch was one of the White House’s top priorities for quite a while now, underscoring how focused they were on getting Ukraine to play their fucking games.
• White House official Tim Morrison testified to corroborate pretty much everything the other guys have been saying (plus or minus a few minor details). Most interestingly, he let’s us all know that he’s positive nothing illegal happened! The White House, of course, latched onto this, without pausing to wonder how much it matters that some person just says “this wasn’t illegal, I assure you” about a thing that’s illegal.

Where are we headed?

• Democrats are planning on releasing impeachment testimony transcripts over the next week.
• Rick Perry has declined to testify, though he has not been subpoena’d.
• But fear not! Democrats have a plan to deal with people who violate subpoenas (WARNING – AUTOPLAY VIDEO BECAUSE WE LIVE IN HELL). And that big plan is ::drumroll please:: keep doing impeachment stuff! My understanding of the plan:
  • People defy subpoenas
  • They go public with impeachment stuff, as they already planned.
  • ????
  • Win

MONDAY:

Today (Monday), four White House officials were scheduled to testify but all of them have declined.

• These officials are: national security lawyers John Eisenberg and Michael Ellis, Robert Blair (assistant to the president and adviser to Mick Mulvaney), and Brian McCormack ( associate director for natural resources energy and science at the OMB).
• Blair and McCormack have already been subpoena’d, and will be violating those subpoenas if they do indeed not testify, as is the plan.

TUESDAY:

Wells Griffith, an ex-aide to non-testifier Rick Perry, and Michael Duffey of the OMB have both been requested to testify Tuesday, but they are expected to decline.

WEDNESDAY:

This is Rick Perry’s No-Show Day! Merry Obstructsmas! (He said he’d consider a public hearing though – why these people think that’s a better way, I have no idea)

THURSDAY:

This is John Bolton’s potential No-Show Day! (Or, if we’re lucky, potential Mustache-Flapping Day). John Bolton’s lawyers have said he will comply with a subpoena though. Is that another Obstructsmas, or just a sound legal strategy for covering his own ass?

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If you have anything to add, holler in the comments. I am a mere mortal non-journalist and could’ve missed something.

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From my Kinja blog:

The Rules

The Constitution grants the House wide latitude to decide the rules governing the investigation, which was the argument early on for moving ahead with impeachment months and months ago. This is by far the most important outcome of the resolution vote. The biggies are:

The inquiry will be governed by the House Intelligence Committee, led by Adam Schiff.

They will now be holding public hearings.

Normally, committee members all get 5 minutes to question a witness, use it for grandstanding, and no one learns anything. Under the new rules, Schiff can extend his own time to up to 45 minutes (as long as ranking member Devin Fucking Nunes gets the same courtesy). I wish they hadn’t have included that last part but it’s probably best for the appearance of fairness. Also, Schiff may do this multiple times.

This is significant because now witnesses cannot effectively filibuster through their time, and there won’t be constant interruptions.

Republicans, predictably, were super mad this was being done behind closed doors and said they needed to take the formal vote and did Pizza Gaetz, and then, even more predictably, are now super mad everything is going to be in public and think they should have never taken that vote. Whodathunk?!