authorizations agreed to by the House of Representatives in 1974 and 1998. Most notably, it bifurcated impeachment proceedings, allowing the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (the "Intelligence Committee") to usurp what has traditionally been the Committee's investigative role in presidential impeachment. To be clear, Members of the House of Representatives will soon have to vote on Articles of Impeachment reported by a Judiciary Committee that has barely reviewed the alleged evidence. After the Intelligence Committee "investigation," the Judiciary Committee held only one hearing and one presentation from staff on the impeachment inquiry. Not only was the Judiciary Committee almost completely shut out from the impeachment inquiry, it turned down the opportunity to examine all of the evidence collected by the Intelligence Committee or to hear testimony from even one fact witness.
The Majority allowed the entire investigative portion to take place in a committee that denied Minority-requested witnesses, would not allow the participation of the President's counsel to question fact witnesses, and censored Minority questions.[1] After the Intelligence Committee's one-sided investigation, the Judiciary Committee was unable to conduct a full review, leaving the American people in the dark.
The Minority has a right to a minority day of hearings under clause 2(j)(1) of Rule XI of the Rules of the House.[2] The Rules set forth that a minority day of hearings must occur on the "measure or matter" under consideration at the time of the demand. On December 4, 2019, the Committee held a hearing titled "The Impeachment Inquiry into President Donald J. Trump: Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment.[3] It was during that hearing that a demand for a minority day of hearings was made. In fact, a demand for a minority day of hearings was made less than two minutes after the start of the hearing, which was the first Committee hearing designated pursuant to H. Res. 660.[4] Given the issue under consideration at the December 4 hearing, the Rules would require that the Chairman schedule a minority day of hearings on the impeachment inquiry into President Donald J. Trump, the matter under consideration at the time of the demand. Once the articles of impeachment were considered and adopted, the impeachment inquiry ended, and the necessity of the minority hearing day dissipated. After the Chairman failed to acknowledge his obligation to schedule such a hearing during the December 4 hearing, Ranking Member Doug Collins sent a letter the following day reminding the Chairman that the requested minority hearing day must be scheduled before Committee consideration of any articles of impeachment.
The issue was again raised at the staff presentation hearing on December 9, 2019.[5] Each time the issue was raised directly to the Chairman, he said that he was still considering the
- ↑ Valerie Richardson, Adam Schiff Rejects Hunter Biden, 'Whistleblower' as Impeachment Witnesses, Washington Times (Nov. 10, 2019); Bob Fredericks & Aaron Feis, Adam Schiff Blocks Republicans' Attempts to Question Impeachment Witnesses, New York Post (Nov. 19, 2019).
- ↑ Rules of the House of Representative, Clause (2)(j)(1), Rule XI.
- ↑ The Impeachment Inquiry into President Donald J. Trump: Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment, Hearing Before the H. Comm. On the Judiciary, 116th Cong. (2019).
- ↑ Id. at 4.
- ↑ The Impeachment Inquiry into President Donald J. Trump: Presentations from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and House Judiciary Committee, Hearing Before the H. Comm, on the Judiciary, 116th Cong. 12 (2019).
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