Apart from the impeachment proceedings, Trump has been litigating for months against virtually all demands for documents and information related to various types of potential presidential misconduct. Trump has also suffered a remarkable series of courtroom losses, often accompanied by emphatic judicial repudiations of his typically weak and overreaching arguments, and the lower court losses are now piling up before the Supreme Court.
Based on his past work as a member of Ken Starr’s team during the investigation of Bill Clinton, it is clear that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh would emphatically disagree with Trump’s efforts to benefit from this obstruction of Congress.
Starr assigned Kavanaugh to play a key role in authoring Starr’s report to Congress, which included a section setting forth potential bases for impeaching the president; among them was a claim that Clinton should be impeached for going to court to assert the executive privilege in the first place. According to Starr and Kavanaugh, the privilege assertion was itself impeachable, because it was purportedly meritless and Clinton had managed to use the privilege litigation to delay Starr’s investigation. As the Starr Report put it, the temporary delay amounted to an illicit “conceal[ment]” by Clinton of his “personal misconduct.” Starr and Kavanaugh also argued that Clinton should be impeached because he refused to voluntarily testify himself, despite the fact that (unlike Trump) Clinton ultimately testified after receiving a subpoena; once again, mere delay was deemed potentially impeachable.
Clinton voluntarily dropped his litigation challenges, thus allowing Starr to obtain the evidence he sought in more than sufficient time to complete his report. All of the relevant evidence was ultimately made available to Congress in connection with its impeachment inquiry. By contrast, Trump has managed to employ litigation—and outright obstinacy—to keep potentially important documents and witnesses relating to the Ukraine investigation wholly out of the hands of Congress. Furthermore, Trump has gone to court in an effort to prevent Congress from reviewing the testimony and documents underlying Robert Mueller’s investigation as well.
It is not hard to imagine what a young Brett Kavanaugh would say about Trump’s bad-faith use of the courts to stonewall Congress’ investigation. He would say it amounts to “unlawful” presidential obstruction of Congress.
Lots of obstruction going on
Sent from my ONEPLUS A6013 using
JazzFanz mobile app
