Our do-nothing GOP Congress is readying to leave town today for a five-week August recess. (When they come back in September, they have scheduled only 12 legislative days to fund the government and avert a government shutdown. What could possibly go wrong? McConnell, Ryan pitch Trump on plan to avoid shutdown).
But before leaving town, the wild-eyed radicals of the House GOP Freedom (sic) Caucus (it would be more accurate to describe them as the GOP Fascist Caucus) decided to file articles of impeachment — not against the Putin-loving traitor who stood on a stage last week in Helsinki and committed treason by siding with the former KGB agent over the unanimous consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies, and Putin’s own admission in the same press conference that he ordered the Russian attack on the U.S. election to aid Donald Trump — but rather against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein who is overseeing the Special Counsel’s Russia investigation.
As I have previously explained:
These authoritarian Trumpkins are requesting to see the prosecutor’s evidence in an active ongoing criminal investigation of the president and his associates, information they are not entitled to receive in the oversight function, so they can then turn that evidence over to Trump’s legal team and to selectively leak it to the GOPropagandists at FAUX News aka “Trump TV,” as they have already done with information the DOJ has previously inappropriately turned over to the committee under unprecedented threats from these authoritarian Trumpkins.
I sincerely hope that the Special Counsel will charge these members of Congress as accessories in aiding and abetting a conspiracy to obstruct justice. More importantly, the voters in their districts must finally put country before party, and hold these lawless Trumpkins accountable for their crimes by kicking their corrupt asses out of office.
POLITICO reports, House conservatives move to impeach Rosenstein:
[The House GOP Freedom Caucus] have filed articles of impeachment in an effort to oust Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the overseer of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
The articles [H.Res. 1028], filed late Wednesday by Reps. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) — two top allies of President Donald Trump — blast Rosenstein for what they allege was a failure to respond to congressional document demands. Senior Justice Department officials have rejected the criticism and described historic levels of cooperation with Congress to share files connected to the FBI investigations of Hillary Clinton’s email server and Trump campaign contacts with Russia.
Though the move marks an escalation by Trump allies against Rosenstein, who has drawn Trump’s ire for appointing Mueller last year, Meadows sidestepped a procedural move that could have forced the issue to a vote this week and laid bare divisions among Republicans. Instead, the House is leaving Thursday for a five-week recess and it’s unclear whether conservatives will attempt to force the issue when lawmakers return in September.
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Jordan, Meadows and their nine conservative cosponsors passed up an opportunity to vote on their articles of impeachment before the recess. Under House procedures, had they introduced the articles as a “privileged” resolution on Tuesday or earlier, they would have had the option of forcing a vote before lawmakers left town.
Cosponsors: Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Scott DesJarlais (R-TN), Jeff Duncan (R-SC), Jody Hice (R-GA), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Scott Perry (R-PA), Bill Posey (R-FL).
Instead, by introducing it Wednesday and opting to allow it to go through the standard committee process, they allowed the measure to languish until September.
Earlier Wednesday, in anticipation of a possible impeachment push, Justice Department officials laid out a massive document-sharing undertaking that they had worked on with House GOP lawmakers. They noted that they had shared more than 880,000 pages of documents connected to the Clinton probe with the Judiciary and Oversight committees. They said they had nearly completed turning over documents demanded in two subpoenas issued by the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees earlier this year.
And officials described an intricate process in which they invited staff and lawmakers to the Justice Department to review documents in person and negotiate over access to sensitive material.
Democrats called the effort a thinly veiled attempt to weaken Rosenstein and help Trump exert more influence over the Mueller investigation, which has crept deeply into Trump’s inner circle.
“The American people have had enough of this manufactured crisis and Republicans’ continuing efforts to undermine Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. “Will [House Republicans] side with Putin or the American people, the rule of law and our democracy?”
* * *
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has previously rejected calls to impeach Rosenstein. He recently described to dispute over Justice Department documents as a “compliance” matter that was well on the way to being resolved. Without GOP leaders’ support, it’s unlikely an impeachment bid could pass the House — and even if it did, it would be doomed in the Senate, where a two-thirds vote is required to oust any executive branch official.
But Rosenstein’s sharpest House critics have previously suggested that laying out articles of impeachment could be enough to prompt Trump to act against Rosenstein on his own.
“We were just kind of hoping somebody else would do it first, either [Attorney General] Jeff Sessions or the president,” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said in a recent interview.
So what we have here is a media messaging campaign for the right-wing during the August recess. FAUX News aka Trump TV has been encouraging Trump to fire Rod Rosenstein and Special Counsel Robert Mueller for over a year now. We all know that Trump takes his “presidential daily briefings” from Fox & Friends each morning. The articles of impeachment serve as the predicate for Trump to fire Rod Rosenstein. He will argue that “Congress has moved to impeach Rosenstein, I had to fire him!” (because I saw it on Trump TV). This now becomes more likely to occur.
The Senate recently narrowly confirmed Brian Benczkowski as the assistant attorney general for the criminal division. He previously served as an aide to Jeff Sessions when he was a U.S. senator, and most recently had been a partner at the Kirkland & Ellis law firm representing the Russian bank Alfa Bank, which drew attention last year after U.S. news media widely reported a possible server connection between the bank and the Trump Organization. Senate confirms Brian Benczkowski, justice official who worked for Russian bank. He is now in the chain of command at Justice. If Trump fires Rod Rosenstein, Benczkowski is the most likely candidate to play the role of Robert Bork in a Nixonian “Saturday night massacre” to fire the Deputy AG and the Special Counsel.
This is what these raging assholes in the House GOP Freedom Caucus are up to with their bogus articles of impeachment against Rod Rosenstein. The fact that Reps. Meadows and Jordan are in frequent contact with the Trump administration and are likely engineering this scenario with Team Trump makes them coconspirators in a conspiracy to obstruct justice. Their fellow travelers are accessories to a conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Come November, all of these traitors should be kicked out of office by voters who still believe in the rule of law and justice.
More like the House GOP Treason Caucus. Time to vote Gosar and Biggs, the Arizona wingnut branch, out.