Meadows leaves door open to impeachment vote on Rosenstein

The House left Thursday afternoon for a five-week recess.

That, as well as the potential of Mueller’s team to interview Trump soon, could increase the president’s animosity toward the probe, Sessions and Rosenstein.

Numerous documents relate to the FBI’s alleged abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act process to obtain a warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. “No, I do not”, Ryan, R-Wis., told reporters at his weekly news conference.

Meadows and Jordan introduced the articles of impeachment alongside nine other lawmakers.

But Napolitano argued that impeaching Rosenstein is the wrong course of action, and that the Justice Department could have credible reasons for keeping some documents under lock and key.

For the same reason, many Republicans and probably all Democrats in Congress are certain to oppose the impeachment of Rosenstein.

The Times describes the move as “a long-shot bid” that was “as much as a political maneuver as an act of congressional oversight”. “But, starting tomorrow, we can bring it up as a privileged motion”.

Jim Jordan is shown during a House committe hearing on July 12. After Jordan forced a vote on impeachment, House leaders moved to bottle it up in committee on a 342-72 vote, with 166 Republicans joining all 176 Democrats voting.

Maybe Meadows and Jordan simply wanted to make sure the first serious talk of impeachment in the House would be about someone other than the president.

Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday firmly rejected an effort by House conservatives to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, putting him at odds with hard-liners in his party and even some in his own leadership team.

Apparently Goldsmith was not the only person to notice the impeachment resolution’s failings.

“I don’t think we should be cavalier with this process or this term”, he said of impeachment.

Napolitano said an impeachable offense would be more of a high crime like bribery or treason, whereas the allegations made against the deputy attorney general should have been treated as more of an ethics violation. “I have the highest confidence in him”.

“I just don’t see that happening”, GOP Rep. Dennis Ross of Florida said. House Republicans say Page’s rights were violated, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation says it had reason to believe Page was a foreign agent working for Russian Federation. “We don’t have full compliance and we need to get full compliance, but we’ve been making tremendous progress to that point”, Ryan said. It is unclear if the measure will ever get a vote in the full chamber.

The steps they took Wednesday echoed similar maneuvering in 2016 by some of the same lawmakers, targeting then-IRS commissioner John Koskinen for impeachment before that year’s seven-week House summer break. But Scalise made clear that House Republicans are prepared to do that if needed.