The White House has been given a deadline to inform the House Judiciary Committee whether President Trump’s attorneys plan to participate in impeachment proceedings beginning next month.
Rep. Jerry Nadler, the chairman of the panel, informed Trump on Friday that he has one week to respond.
“I am to determine if your counsel will seek to exercise the specific privileges set forth in the Judiciary Committee’s Impeachment Procedures adopted pursuant to H.Res.660 and participate in the upcoming impeachment proceedings. In particular, please provide the Committee with notice of whether your counsel intends to participate, specifying which of the privileges your counsel seeks to exercise, no later than 5:00 pm on December 6, 2019,” the New York Democrat said in a letter.
A prior letter from Nadler said Trump had until Sunday to respond to declare whether he and his counsel planned to attend the Judiciary Committee’s first impeachment hearing, which is set for Dec. 4.
Trump, who has called the impeachment hearings a “sham,” is expected to travel to London next week to meet with other world leaders at a NATO summit.
Under a resolution dictating the terms of the proceedings, White House lawyers are permitted to participate and defend Trump, who Democrats believe abused his office by seeking Ukraine’s help investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee.
Earlier this week, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff revealed he is preparing a report the Judiciary Committee would use to move articles of impeachment against Trump. The report is expected to center on testimony provided over the past two months and is expected to be delivered when lawmakers return the week of Dec. 2.
House Republicans are preparing their own impeachment report to counter the one being drafted by the Democrats, according to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
Nadler wrote in his latest letter that his panel has also “been engaged in an investigation concerning allegations that you may have engaged in acts of obstruction of justice,” as detailed in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.”
A redacted version of the report Mueller’s report laid out 10 instances in which Trump might have obstructed justice, but Mueller declined to make a determination on the matter, citing a Justice Department guideline that sitting presidents cannot be indicted. Mueller also did not find sufficient evidence to establish criminal conspiracy took place between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
Before the report’s release in April, Attorney General William Barr released a summary of its principal conclusions which said he and then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein decided there was not sufficient evidence to establish an obstruction crime had occurred.
Nadler also sent a letter on Friday to the ranking member on his panel, Doug Collins, notifying the Georgia Republican that he has until Dec. 6 to “seek my concurrence” to issue any subpoenas or interrogatories during impeachment proceedings.
