It’s Monday

It’s Monday.  Like drinking water from the proverbial fire hose, there’s a ton of information coming at you today.  Why – because it’s Monday in the Trump Administration.

Judiciary Hearings

So what’s happening today?  First, the House Judiciary Committee is meeting from 9am to 11am (please note:  time is kind of a nebulous thing to the Committee, it might start by 9:30, and it might end – well, at 1 or so).  The legal staff of the intelligence committee is presenting the evidence for impeachment to the Judiciary Committee members for their consideration in impeachment resolutions.  Also, the legal staff of the Judiciary Committee itself will be presenting evidence as well.

We can expect a summary of the hearings held by Adam Schiff’s Intelligence Committee, presented by Intelligence Committee counsel Dan Goldman.  Goldman will hold his own in questioning from the two staff attorneys of the Intelligence Committee, then sit patiently while the Committee Members have their say.  Another day of Republican Doug Collin’s eye rolls and yelling, and more of young Matt Gaetz’s disdain for the process and decorum.  

At the end of the testimony, we might have a better feel for what the impeachment resolutions will look like.  The one thing to focus on:  if the testimony goes back to the Mueller Report, we can expect that Mueller findings may become part of the impeachment.  Certainly the second volume of Mueller’s findings, describing obstruction of justice, may well get rolled into the current charges.

Horowitz Report

On a different note, today we expect to see the Inspector General’s Report from the Justice Department about the origins of the Russia investigation into the Trump campaign.  Many of the findings were leaked early from the Justice Department, to lessen the impact of what the Report states.  Overall, in hundreds of pages, the report supposedly finds that the investigation opened under Director Comey was legal and proper.  

The leaks state that Inspector General Horowitz found (for at least the second time) that despite all of the right-wing cries of bias from Comey, Strzok, McCabe, Ohr and the rest, the investigation was, to use the Justice Department term of art, “properly predicated.”  There were mistakes made, and we will hear a lot about a junior attorney in Justice who added information to an email, but overall the vast conspiracy that Fox News and the rest has searched for, didn’t happen.

Attorney General Barr supposedly will contest the conclusions, denying his own IG’s findings.  That will allow Barr to continue the crisis, and make his worldwide search for evidence seem reasonable.  In the political world of Trump, if you don’t have the facts, keep stirring up “the mud”.

Lights, Action, Rudy!!

And speaking of mud, Rudy Giuliani has decided to go into the film making business.  He’s over in Ukraine, continuing his attempt to prove that it was Ukraine that attacked our election in 2016, and not Russia.  Rudy’s lined up “fact witnesses” to demonstrate his evidence.  The real “facts” of those witnesses:  they either have an “ax to grind” against Joe Biden, particularly Viktor Shokin the fired Ukrainian State Prosecutor, or they are fully funded assets of Russia.  But Giuliani is going to use the “documentary” to keep the Ukraine story going.  Supposedly he’s going to come back and present his findings to Attorney General Barr and Congress (I suspect to a sympathetic Senate Judiciary Committee headed by Lindsey Graham).  

For Giuliani’s sake, I hope the FBI doesn’t arrest him as he comes off the plane.  The SDNY (Southern District of New York) Federal Prosecutor seems to be breathing down Rudy’s neck, and charges can’t be too far behind.

So there’s a lot going on today.  Chairman Nadler started right on schedule.  Keep in mind, through all of the bluster and obfuscation, that history has it’s eye on this.