Nadler and Co. display hearty confusion when it comes to ‘impeachment’ question

According to House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, high noon is coming to Pennsylvania Avenue.

For several months now, the democratic party has been sort of threatening President Trump with impeachment for a number of alleged offenses that appears to mutate and rotate week to week.  There’s “RussiaGate”, the dodging of congressional subpoenas, his refusal to release his under-audit tax returns…you name it, the left has attempted to use it as bait.

For what it’s worth, President Trump has been openly goading the left into the idea as well, believing, as they do, that a failed impeachment in the Senate will bolster his 2020 reelection campaign by demonstrating the inefficacy of the democratic party as a whole.  (Combined with the fact that there are 20 some-odd candidates vying for the nomination, and the argument grows ever stronger).

There has even been a strange, semantical flap revolving around the aforementioned Nadler, who has insisted that his work is akin to impeachment proceedings.

High profile democratic leaders sought to squash the confusion today, but ended up sowing only more seeds of doubt.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler tried to clear up confusion within his caucus about impeachment on Thursday as the committee approved guidelines for impeachment hearings on President Donald Trump .

Nadler says there’s no uncertainty about what his committee is doing: It’s an impeachment investigation, no matter how you want to phrase it.

Some of Nadler’s fellow Democrats — including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer — have stumbled over how to explain what they’re doing, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been reluctant to echo the committee’s assertions that they are in the midst of an impeachment probe.

Many believe that these maneuvers will conjure actual impeachment in the flesh.

Still, the committee has persisted in advancing the impeachment issue, partly to bolster two lawsuits against the Trump administration as the White House has repeatedly blocked witness testimony and document production. The suits say the material is needed so the committee can decide whether to recommend articles of impeachment.

The resolution the committee approved along party lines would allow the committee to designate certain hearings as impeachment hearings, empower staff to question witnesses, allow some evidence to remain private and permit the president’s counsel to officially respond to testimony. The committee says the resolution is similar to procedural votes taken at the beginning of the impeachment investigations into Presidents Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.

“Under these procedures, when we have finished these hearings and considered as much evidence we are able to gather, we will decide whether to refer articles of impeachment to the House floor,” Nadler said in his opening statement.

Speaker Pelosi has been the most vocal critic of the idea of impeachment and, given her position of power within the party, appears to hold the keys to the car, so to speak.