I like the rant - it gets the gist across while not turning into the tome it could be if one wanted to “be thorough”...
FReepers appreciate your donation - would be willing to put up with a lot of pap from those who refuse to donate and think we care what they have to say. If they would shake loose with a few bucks now and then...but their words don’t count as much as those of a mind to pay their own way...being invested in FReedom tends to make posts more relevant....hence my tagline.
Currently the Legislative Branch is expressing their “impeachment authority” as part of the Legislative Branch purpose.
So that raises the issue of an entirely different type of subpoena: A demand from congress that penetrates the constitutional separation of powers
and further penetrates the legal authority of Executive Branch executive privilege.
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POINTS TO PONDER
It was separately established by SCOTUS during the Nixon impeachment investigation that
*IF* the full House votes to have the Judiciary Committee commence an impeachment investigation,
then the Judiciary Committee has subpoena power that can overcome executive privilege claims.
<><> There has been NO VOTE to create that level of subpoena power.
<><> ergo, the House has not created a process to penetrate the constitutionally inherent separation of powers,
<><> nor the legally recognized firewall known as ‘executive privilege’.
<><> a House vote authorizes the committee impeachment investigation,
<><> only then does the committee gains judicial enforcement authority.
<><> thus creating the penalty for non-compliance with an impeachment subpoena.
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A demand letter only becomes a “subpoena” (technically ‘a request for the production of documents with a penalty for non-compliance’) when the committee has judicial enforcement authority.
Only then does that process establish an enforcement penalty.
The current demand letters cannot carry a penalty because the demands do not contain judicial enforcement authority....simply because the impeachment investigation was not authorized by the chamber.
The reason judicial enforcement authority is constitutionally required is because creating Judicial enforcement authority, creating the penalty for non-compliance, gives the Executive Branch a process to appeal any legislative demand via the Judicial Branch (federal courts).
Absent a penalty for non-compliance, which factually makes a subpoena a ‘subpoena’, the Executive Branch has no process to engage an appellate review by federal courts.
This, then, is the purposeful trick within the Pelosi/Lawfare road-map.