Rattled: Trump's prevent defense
by Tom Sullivan
All four White House officials scheduled to give closed-door testimony today in the House impeachment inquiry will not appear, multiple news outlets report. They include National Security Council lawyers John Eisenberg and Michael Ellis as well Brian McCormack of the office of management and budget, and Robert Blair, a top aide to chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. Eisenberg and McCormack are under subpoena. Blair was on the July 25 call with the president of Ukraine at the center of the inquiry.
CNN reports the administration is claiming executive privilege in Eisenberg's case, while officials claim Ellis, McCormack and Blair won't be able to have a White House lawyer present.
OMB officials Michael Duffey and Russell Vought will not appear as scheduled later this week, a source tells CNN.
The Washington Post explains:
Russell Vought, a Mulvaney protege who leads the White House Office of Management and Budget, intends a concerted defiance of congressional subpoenas in coming days, and two of his subordinates will follow suit — simultaneously proving their loyalty to the president and creating a potentially critical firewall regarding the alleged use of foreign aid to elicit political favors from a U.S. ally.Donald Trump is his own war room, press secretary Stephanie Grisham told Fox News. He is enraged that his "employees" have been testifying before Congress. He threatens to expose the whistleblower whose original complaint is irrelevant now that his account has been corroborated by multiple administration officials. Trump threatened Sunday to expose Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman (who already testified) as a “Never Trumper.” Reporters would see his evidence against an active duty Army officer on his White House staff "very soon."
The OMB is at the nexus of the impeachment inquiry because Democrats are pressing for details about why the White House budget office effectively froze the Ukraine funds that Congress had already appropriated.
False stories are being reported that a few Republican Senators are saying that President Trump may have done a quid pro quo, but it doesn’t matter, there is nothing wrong with that, it is not an impeachable event. Perhaps so, but read the transcript, there is no quid pro quo!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 4, 2019
Trump's strategy to resist impeachment investigation is to commit more impeachable offences in public, which congress will have to investigate, leading him to commit more impeachable offences in public, etc. etc. In theory this could stretch things out forever. https://t.co/vNNC1b6cyh
— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) November 4, 2019