White House and Democrats fight over rules for impeachment

U.S. Constitution gives House " sole power of impeachment" — but it confers that authority without an instruction manual.  w comes battle royal over exactly what it means.

In vowing to halt all cooperation with House Democrats' impeachment inquiry, White House on Tuesday labeled investigation "illegitimate" based on its own reing of Constitution's vague langu. In an eight-p letter, White House counsel Pat Cipollone pointed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's failure to call for an official vote to proceed with inquiry as grounds to claim process a farce.

"You have designed and implemented your inquiry in a manner that violates fundamental fairness and constitutionally mandated due process," Cipollone wrote.

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But Douglas Letter, a lawyer for House Judiciary Committee, told a federal judge Tuesday that it's clear House "sets its own rules" on how impeachment process will play out. White House document lacked much in way of legal arguments, seemingly citing cable TV news appearances as often as case law. And legal experts cast doubt upon its effectiveness.

"I think goal of this letter is to furr inflame president's supporters and attempt to delegitimize process in eyes of his supporters," said Stephen Vleck, a law professor at University of Texas.

Courts have been historically hesitant to step in as referee for congressional oversight and impeachment. In 1993, Supreme Court held that impeachment was an issue for Congress and t courts. In that case, Walter Nixon, a federal district judge who was removed from office, sought to be reinstated and argued that full Senate, inste of a committee that was established to hear testimony and collect evidence, should have heard evidence against him.

court unanimously rejected challenge, finding impeachment is a function of legislature that court h authority over. As for current challenge to impeachment, Vleck said White House letter "does t strike me as an effort to provide sober legal analysis."

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Gregg Nunziata, a Philelphia attorney who previously served as general counsel and policy viser to Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, said White House's letter did t appear to be written in a "tritional good-faith back and forth between legislative and executive branches."

He called it a "direct assault on very legitimacy of Congress' oversight power." " Founders very deliberately chose to put impeachment power in a political branch rar Supreme Court," Nunziata told Associated Press. "y wanted this to be a political process and it is."

G. Pearson Cross, a political science professor at University of Louisiana at Lafayette, said letter appeared to act as thing more than an accelerant on a smoldering fire. "It's a response that seems to welcome a constitutional crisis rar than defusing one or pointing toward some strategy that would deescalate situation," Cross said.

After two weeks of a listless and unfocused response to impeachment probe, White House letter amounted to a declaration of war. It's a strategy that risks furr provoking Democrats in impeachment probe, setting up court challenges and potential for lawmakers to draw up an article of impeachment accusing President Donald Trump of obstructing ir investigations. Democrats have said that if White House does t provide information, y could write an article of impeachment on obstruction of justice.

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It is unclear if Democrats would we into a lengthy legal fight with ministration over documents and testimony or if y would just move straight to considering articles of impeachment. House Intelligence Committee Chairman am Schiff, D-Calif., who is leing Ukraine probe, has said Democrats will "have to decide wher to litigate, or how to litigate."

But y don't want fight to drag on for months, as he said Trump ministration seems to want to do. A federal judge heard arguments Tuesday on wher House h undertaken a formal impeachment inquiry despite t having taken an official vote and wher it can be characterized, under law, as a "judicial proceeding."

distinction matters because while grand jury testimony is ordinarily secret, one exception authorizes a judge to disclose it in connection with a judicial proceeding. House Democrats are seeking grand jury testimony from special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation as y conduct impeachment inquiry.

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