In the last impeachment, in 1998, even President Clinton was compelled to testify.
This time around, the House decided not to try to force potential witnesses like Bolton, Mulvaney, Giuliani, or Trump himself to testify. (And the GOP-dominated Senate is not expected to do so.)
Would there have been a significant down side if the House had threatened reluctant witnesses with fines and/or jail, or even used the Capitol police to bring them in?
(And can future impeachments even work if this one sets the precedent that there are no consequences for refusing to testify?)
The impeachment “show” has to happen prior to the election in order for it to sufficiently “dirty” up the President so that the democratic nominee can have a chance of defeating him.
Back to the OP: I’m not sure what the house could have done to compel Trump to stop obstructing testimony, the dude ignores the law and legal orders like nobody’s business. Who knows how long Trump would have tied things up in the courts. I, too, am trusting in Nancy Pelosi, Law Abider, here.
Don McGahn already had a very similar suit underway. There was no need to waste time on another, especially since there was every reason to believe the McGahn decision would be appealed - as it has been. It hasn’t yet gone to the Supreme Court. Paywall NY Times story.
Let’s not forget that for the Clinton impeachment, there was a 4-year independent counsel investigation headed up by Kenneth Starr. Most of the witnesses that testified before the Senate had already testified before a grand jury under oath. What they were going to say was already known to all because they had transcripts. Similarly, that investigation produced some 90,000 documents before the trial ever started.
Why didn’t we have an independent or special counsel appointed for Trump’s impeachment investigation?
Bill Barr, that’s why. Despite having received at least 3 referrals from various executive branch agencies, he ignored them and declared there was “nothing” to investigate.
That’s why the House of Representatives was left to conduct its own investigation, and why Trump stonewalled every subpoena for both witnesses and documents.
To fight these things in the court takes years. Since one of the main concerns in impeaching Trump is to prevent him from subverting the 2020 election, waiting years for court rulings on subpoena compliance makes no sense.
This isn’t technically true; Congress still has the power of inherent contempt, even though it hasn’t been used since the 1930s. What this means is that instead of relying on the Justice Department the House could’ve theoretically sent the Capital Police out to enforce subpoenas (even the extend of detaining people and physically bringing them before the committees).
I don’t understand the logic that Congress can’t compel the Executive Branch to do something because of separation of powers, but the Judicial Branch can and it’s perfectly fine with no separation of powers issues.
The most important battleground for the impeachment fight was always going to be the daily headlines. If the Dems had let all these subpoenas drag through court, headlines on a day-to-day basis will be something about whether an appeal to a ruling on a subpoena would be taken up, and people wouldn’t have kept their interest as high as if you maximize the number of affirmative stories about people testifying that Trump directed them to extort foreign officials. Better to just throw all that stuff on the “obstruction of congress” article and move on.
There’s the argument that if you give up on compelling witnesses and documents, Trump’s team can argue that the obstruction charge is flimsy, but I think politically this is a mistake. There’s always going to be something they can use to muddy the waters and it’s more important to reach people with your positive case than to try to defend against every conceivable counterargument.
I do think they should have simply called the second article “obstruction of justice”.
I had thought Congress ought to be more assertive in subpoenaing docs and testimony. It seemed they pretty quickly adopted an attitude of, “Well, no use in trying harder, b/c the admin will just stonewall, and we don’t care to go through the courts.”
To some extent, however, they were pretty much damned if they do/don’t. The Admin/Repubs were going to oppose - and criticize - any choice/action.
I decided Pelosi and others were far more expert than I re: what could be done, and the likely benefits of various strategies. However, they seem to consistently be getting pretty damned mild bang for their buck.
Congress could easily take away the DoJ’s prosecutorial discretion when it comes to forwarding contempt of congress to a grand jury. They would only have to amend 2 U.S.C. 194, striking the words “whose duty it shall be” and inserting “who shall within one week”.
2 U.S.C. 194
“Whenever a witness summoned as mentioned in section 192 of this title fails to appear to testify or fails to produce any books, papers, records, or documents, as required, or whenever any witness so summoned refuses to answer any question pertinent to the subject under inquiry before either House, or any joint committee established by a joint or concurrent resolution of the two Houses of Congress, or any committee or subcommittee of either House of Congress, and the fact of such failure or failures is reported to either House while Congress is in session or when Congress is not in session, a statement of fact constituting such failure is reported to and filed with the President of the Senate or the Speaker of the House, it shall be the duty of the said President of the Senate or Speaker of the House, as the case may be, to certify, and he shall so certify, the statement of facts aforesaid under the seal of the Senate or House, as the case may be, to the appropriate United States attorney, whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action.”