Buckle up for the impeachment express

Perhaps even more significant than the growing number of calls for impeachment is a lawsuit filed by the Judiciary Committee on Friday. The filing, demanding access to grand jury material from the Mueller investigation, says that the committee “is conducting an investigation to determine whether to recommend articles of impeachment.” In other words, the Judiciary Committee, which would oversee any potential impeachment, announced, with surprisingly little fanfare, that an impeachment inquiry is already underway.

For months now, there’s been an acrimonious intra-Democratic debate about whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should call a vote to begin such an inquiry. Now, however, the Judiciary Committee is asserting that such a vote isn’t required, and as Nadler points out, Pelosi has signed off on the strategy. The House would have to vote on impeachment itself, but that would come only after the Judiciary Committee has done much of its work.

“The Constitution does not delineate what a formal impeachment inquiry is, and the House rules don’t define what a formal impeachment inquiry is,” said Jamie Raskin, a Democrat on the Judiciary Committee who was a professor of constitutional law. “We all looked up after Robert Mueller’s testimony and realized that we are in an impeachment inquiry. What is this if not an investigation into high crimes and misdemeanors? That’s obviously what we’re doing.”

This might seem a little too cute — it allows Democrats to satisfy their base’s demand that Trump be held accountable without forcing representatives from conservative districts to take a potentially perilous vote. “I just have a feeling that you’ve either got to do it or not; you can’t have it both ways,” said Titus.

But Nadler argues that the Judiciary Committee started its impeachment inquiry into Richard Nixon before the full House voted to approve it. Impeachment proceedings for federal judges have begun in the Judiciary Committee without a House vote.

Whatever you want to call it, Nadler is hoping that Mueller’s appearance is just the first in a series of high-profile hearings. Soon his committee will go to court to enforce a subpoena of Donald McGahn, the former

By Michelle Goldberg

Syndicated columnist

Last Wednesday, after Robert Mueller’s terse and sometimes halting congressional testimony, conventional wisdom quickly congealed: Mueller’s performance had made President Donald Trump’s impeachment far less likely. “Robert S. Mueller III’s disastrous testimony has taken the wind out of the sails of the Democratic impeachment drive,” wrote Marc Thiessen in The Washington Post. CNN’s Chris Cillizza declared Mueller’s testimony “a bust — at least when it came to generating momentum for impeachment.”

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