Rep. Jerrold Nadler
In a huge blow to Jerrold Nadler, a federal judge on Wednesday shot down a key aspect of the Democrat-led House Judiciary’s impeachment inquiry.
Last month, the House Judiciary Committee asked a federal judge to unseal the grand jury material related to Mueller’s investigation.
The court filing was used to declare that the Democrats in the House have launched an ‘impeachment investigation’ of President Trump.
The Dem-led panel told a judge that it needs access to Mueller’s grand-jury evidence — such as witness testimony — because it is “investigating whether to recommend articles of impeachment” against Trump.
Nadler attempted to have the same judge assigned to Mueller’s case also assigned to their court fight to get testimony from former White House Counsel Don McGahn.
Earlier this week, the House Judiciary Democrats argued the two cases were related because “both seek key evidence for the Judiciary Committee’s investigation into whether to recommend articles of impeachment against President Donald J. Trump for potentially criminal obstructive conduct.”
DOJ lawyers argued that the Democrats were “attempting to game the system” by “shopping” for a Deep State, anti-Trump judge.
US District Judge Beryl Howell of the District of Columbia, an Obama appointee, denied Nadler on Wednesday and wrote in an 11-page memorandum that the connections between the two cases “are too superficial and attenuated” to meet the rigors for designating the cases as related.
“[A]t first blush, the House Judiciary Committee’s view that the related case rule applies is understandable,” Judge Beryl Howell wrote in her opinion. “Nonetheless, closer examination demonstrates that these connections between the two cases are too superficial and attenuated for the instant McGahn Subpoena Case to qualify[.]”
Howell is currently presiding over the grand jury case and on Wednesday, the McGahn testimony case was ‘randomly’ assigned to another Obama judge — Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Imagine our shock.
In any event, not having the same judge assigned to both cases took a lot of wind out of Nadler’s impeachment sail because it shows how weak his case is and that he’s in for a very long, arduous legal battle.
