By Denny Gulino
THE WHITE HOUSE (MaceNews) – The lightning-like upgrade to impeachment inquiry status caught the Trump team off guard, during a Manhattan foray for the president that lasted nearly a week, but now the White House’s chief resident is back, signaling Thursday that the fight is on.
What one Capitol Hill newspaper counted as a legal force of more than 30 White House, Justice Department and personal lawyers has proven to be a formidable courtroom adversary in state and federal cases. Now that team can strategize, plan counterattacks and prepare for the long slog ahead, kept focused by that veteran of so many courtroom battles, Donald Trump.
The same is true on the other side, with the staff of six House committees able to coordinate much more closely under the umbrella authorization conferred by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. More subpoenas and more document searches, more pressure applied to whatever weak links are detected in the Trump defense.
Already the impeachment inquiry has two more prime targets, Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Giuliani can claim attorney-client privilege and Pompeo can be protected by the imposition of executive privilege.
Yet what Pompeo told Giuliani to do or directed others to tell, if anything, as the private attorney traveled internationally on what appears to be state-related Ukraine business, would seem to fall outside the arena of privilege and into the realm of national security. At least that is what the Democratic committee chairs are likely to claim.
Trump’s friends will also be looking for targets and will be seeking informal pledges of loyalty – and loyalty demonstrations – as opposing forces are locked into place.
Democrats will be trying to chisel away at the conventional wisdom that there is no way enough Republican senators will ever abandon the president. A President Mike Pence would still be a Republican president and without the surprises Trump keeps springing on friends and foes alike, they’re likely to suggest.
Meanwhile, in the Oval Office, the tweet storms are likely to get even more pointed and personal if Thursday was any indication. As Air Force One approached Washington, the tweeter-in-chief was hurling volleys.
“Liddle’ Adam Schiff, who has worked unsuccessfully for 3 years to hurt the Republican Party and President, has just said that the Whistleblower, even though he or she only had second hand information, “is credible,” Trump wrote as TVs on the plane showed the House Intelligence Committee hearing wrapping up. “How can that be with zero info and a known bias. Democrat Scam!”
After the presidential plane landed at Joint Base Andrews, he fumed, delivering a three-minute angry statement and taking no questions.
“Democrats are going lose the election and they know it. That’s why they are doing it,” he told the travel pool. “It should never be allowed,” he added. “There should be a way of stopping it. Maybe legally through the courts.”
There was much more. By the time Trump had traveled by helicopter to the White House he apparently decided not to waste any more time talking to all the reporters gathered at the ropeline. He waved and went inside instead.
It was Politico, the Capitol Hill news media, that looked at the extended Trump legal team. In the days and weeks and months ahead of Washington warfare, of leaks and counter leaks, witness testimony and court orders, tweets and opposing narratives, the public – and market participants – may become a lot more familiar with the jousting personalities.
Chief among the president’s personal lawyers is Jay Sekulow, whose conservative-themed talk show will likely get a lot more listeners looking for clues to White House strategy. There’s William Consovoy, a Northern Virginia-former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, already juggling several lawsuits. There’s Jody Hunt, a former chief of staff for ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who is already defending the president in several impeachment-related lawsuits.
There’s Pat Cipollone, the new White House Counsel, and his deputy Michael Purpura and another 18 or so lawyers in the beefed up Counsel staff.
And there’s Giuliani. He unexpectedly, in a Fox News interview, made sure that Pompeo would be sharing any attention he gets from the impeachment inquiry.
“I never talked to a Ukrainian official until the State Department called me and asked me to do it,” Giuliani said.
Like a main event in the Colosseum, the impeachment inquiry in all its complexity, with a cast of characters assuming much more public roles, has begun to draw the attention, even fuel the fixation, of all of Washington.