I think Nadler's stunning suprise move tonight indicates a massive bombshell is coming from SCOTUS

[NewsCenter28]

I think a supreme court clerk may have leaked to Chairman Nadler that the stay is going to be lifted, rather than continued, tomorrow on Toad's tax returns and he wants to incorporate the bombshell criminal data from newly released tax returns into the final articles of impeachment once he has a chance to review them with his lawyers. The Judiciary Dems may have all of this info before the afternoon hours tomorrow.

Just a reminder that the court either issues a further stay or lets the returns go to Congress tomorrow. No other option for them.

[JoeOtterbein]

1. We hope! nt

[Drum]

2. Wowow that's intriguing!!!

[NewsCenter28]

5. And just to reiterate

Justice Ginsburg granted only a 1-week stay last week, last Friday. Her ruling specifically requires further action tomorrow one way or the other.

[drray23]

3. what did he do exactly ?

I was watching 30 mins ago and they were still going at it. What did Nadler do ?

[BumRushDaShow]

6. Adjourned for the night with the final votes happening tomorrow morning at 10:00 am ET

Collins and the rest of the GOP blew a gasket!

[drray23]

8. well that was bound to happen.

I am not sure I see anything out of the ordinary about that ? they had been going at it all day.

[BumRushDaShow]

15. The assumption was that once they were done the debate on amendments that they would vote tonight

And the GOP liked being that "poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

But they were just "exited stage right"... and out of the spotlight before the final act so all that drama was really for naught.

[certainot]

30. how many amendments could they have kept putting up? was there a limit?

[BumRushDaShow]

42. I don't think their regular markup rules puts a limit on amendments

Sometimes when bills get voted out of committee and go to the floor for further action, the Rules Committee will work out specific rules for that legislation that might limit the time for debate and/or limit the number of amendments that each side can submit for consideration. But within the committees themselves, I think their rules allow the opportunity for both parties to amend and debate a piece of legislation until satisfied, and then vote on whether it will leave the committee for full House review and vote or will be rejected and tabled.

[not fooled]

31. Hahahahahaha

How apropos. Another wannabee king foreseeing his downfall.

There's a Shakespeare quote for every occasion.

[crickets]

12. Gaveled the meeting to a close without calling a final vote.

In essence he said, "see you tomorrow morning at 10!" :gavelbang: Collins (R-GA minority chair) had a dramatic fit.

[BumRushDaShow]

4. I don't know about that...

I just know that it is 11:30 pm ET and doing an important vote like this in the middle of the night ET/CT would do a disservice and would "hide" a critical historical event for the American public.

If the GOP had not extended the debate more and more and attempted to add bogus amendments, they could have voted earlier this afternoon or evening (ET). This markup had actually started last night and went for 4 hours (7pm - 11 pm) and then continued all day today (9am ET to ~11:15 pm ET).

[NewsCenter28]

10. That's certainly possible

But it isn't procedure and it's not what had been telegraphed earlier by the Democrats apparently. So, who knows. Fascinating.

[BumRushDaShow]

18. When they do these markups, they allow prety much "unlimited debate" using a parliamentary trick

of "striking the last word" - where what is normally a total of 10 minutes of debate divided equally between each side - can get extended in 5 minute increments as they go through each member who is willing to speak.

There are 41 members on the House Judiciary Committee (looks like Ted Lieu had been absent today which is why the votes were always 23 - 17)... so if each one invoked that trick, that is 41 x 5 minutes each = 205 minutes or ~3.1 hours for each amendment. And with the GOP continuing to introduce bogus amendment after bogus amendment - well then you can do the math.

They could have limited their debate remarks but they wanted to preen and prance around all day today. So they paid the price.

[StarfishSaver]

23. As usual, you broke it down perfectly

Thanks!

[BumRushDaShow]

27. Good early early morning (for me)!

[Arthur_Frain]

7. This sounds speculative to me.

Pretty speculative actually. Do you have some resources?

[NewsCenter28]

13. I do

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/06/trump-supreme-court-tax-returns-077263

The stay is ordered until 5 p.m. on Dec. 13, and the court ordered that a response must be filed on or before Dec. 11 by 11 a.m.
Story Continued Below


The emergency filing came after a federal appeals court in New York ruled on Tuesday that Deutsche Bank and Capital One should comply with subpoenas from the House Financial Services and House Intelligence committees seeking information about Trump’s finances.
The House subpoenas seek documents including tax returns, evidence of suspicious activity and, in the case of Deutsche Bank, any internal communications regarding Trump and his ties to foreign individuals.
Trump-related requests are piling up at the Supreme Court — and the outcomes could set precedent on significant questions related to separation-of-power issues and whether a president is immune from state-based criminal investigations while in office.
On Thursday, the president asked the justices to overturn the D.C. Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals’ decision requiring his accounting firm Mazars USA to turn over financial records in compliance with a subpoena from the House Oversight Committee.
And the Supreme Court is already scheduled to meet Dec. 13 in a closed-door conference to consider a separate request from Trump involving the 2nd Circuit’s opinion ordering Mazars to hand over Trump’s financial records to a grand jury in New York.
Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. ended up in a legal standoff with the president while investigating the Trump Organization’s role in alleged hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels, as well as other matters.

Note the stay ends at 5 p.m. and the court is also holding a conference tomorrow as well on these issues.

[Arthur_Frain]

19. Well, I'll allow that there's a convenience to the timing of the release.

But originally being scheduled to vote tonight......I think you might be stretching. Don’t get me wrong! I’d absolutely love to wake up tomorrow morning and find out you were spot on here.

Hope Nadler gets some sleep tonight if that’s the case. Sharper minds than me are going to spend all night poring over a shit ton of documents that would put me to sleep on my edgiest day. Then they’re going to have to brief him in a meaningful way.

My personal take on it after thinking about it for a bit is it would surprise me. I think they went to an awful lot of trouble to limit the impeachment articles in the manner that they did. There very well may be something actionable in he document dump from the removal of the stay, but without vetting it considerably, I don’t think they’d want to risk it. If there does turn out to be some taint to it, it would undermine everything else that they’ve done to date.

There would have to be some stone cold bulletproof shit in those Deutchebank docs. Don’t think I’d lay my money on that line for tonight, maybe later.

[onenote]

9. Pretty absurd speculation.

[NewsCenter28]

14. Just curious-why is it absurd?

When there are not just one, but THREE CASES PENDING BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT ON HIS TAX RETURNS AT THIS VERY MOMENT WITH THEM SCHEDULED TO BE DISCUSSED AT THE JUSTICES' CONFERENCE ON DECEMBER 13, 2019, which is tomorrow.

Are you asserting that you think it is absurd to think the SCOTUS will accept the arguments from the legislative branch and order the tax returns released? What?

Is it absurd to assert that the SCOTUS is considering releasing Trump's tax returns to congress? Is it absurd to state, as Politico did, that the stay is either lifted or continued at 5 p.m. tomorrow and that the topic is likely to come up at the traditional Friday conference tomorrow?

[Ms. Toad]

20. Absurd that the speculation is based on a leak by a clerk

Not consistent with the culture within courts at any level within the federal system, and especially not at the supreme court level.

Are you aware of ANY pre-release leaks in any supreme court decision? Clerks know all of those ahead of time - for weeks. It is a very tight community - not to mention that leaking information would be career suicide by someone who has everything going for them (career-wise).

[onenote]

22. +1(Plus you're mistaken as to what the Court has in front of it tomorrow)

The petition for certiorari in the Vance case (arising from the New York State law regarding disclosure of Trump's taxes) is due to be considered at conference tomorrow. But typically, the order indicating whether cert has been granted or denied isn't issued the same day as the conference.

A petition for cert has been filed in the Mazars case, but the docket does not indicate that it is being considered at conference tomorrow.

And in the Deutsche Bank case, the Court likely will decide tomorrow whether to continue in effect the current stay while a petition for cert is filed and considered --it is all but certain that the court will grant the continuation of the stay.

[DetroitLegalBeagle]

24. Bingo

No SCOTUS clerk is leaking anything about official court business. They are the future superstars of the legal world. At the end of their time at SCOTUS they will be able to walk into any major law office in the country and walk out with a $350k+ signing bonus and a monster salary that very same day. Nobody is risking that to leak something that is eventually going to be made public anyway.

[greyl]

11. More likely about having the vote happening in broad daylight. nt

[OliverQ]

16. Nah, Swalwell and Raskin just said they want the vote

during the day so Americans can see it, not some midnight vote when everyone is sleeping.

[napi21]

17. I think he did it just to piss off te Pubs. Per Collins, many were going home tonight, many were to

go on some trip & now can't go. THEY ARE PO'D!

[Scotch-Irish]

44. They think they can always get a 4-day work week for what we're paying them?

If they didn't have their big heads stuck up their butts, they'd care about sticking with their jobs.

[triron]

21. Whoa! No idea about this.

[StarfishSaver]

25. Even if Nadler had gotten a heads up - which is highly unlikely - what difference would it make?

How would that affect the vote on these articles of impeachment?

[Takket]

26. nothing they are currently doing has anything to do with his taxes so i don't see why that would

matter. even if they got his taxes tomorrow reviewing them and investigating anything to do with them probably has to go back to intelligence committee so Nadler would be sitting on the articles for another month at least. i don't think the dems want to do that.

[burrowowl]

28. It really riled the Repukes!

[Captain Zero]

40. Probably because gop planned to bitch & moan about

The articles passing the committee in the Dead of the Night. You know they would.

[Curtis]

29. Not even close

What it's more likely about is that the Democrats want to have this vote in the full light of day instead of in the dark of night.

Could you imagine the public relations coup the Dems would hand the Republicans if we passed articles of impeachment "in the dead of night while America slept" to go along with the "closed door hearings in the basement of the capital." It would be horrible optics.

[VarryOn]

32. It's been 1,129 days since this process started...

On November 8, 2016. Another day or two wont hurt. I'm as eager as anyone, but let's relish themoment!

[Quixote1818]

33. Doubtful, I think they just wanted to have the vote when more American's are tuned in

and it can carry over into the weekend news.

[pnwmom]

34. Either that or he's knocking the R's off balance, which is fine with me. n/t

[mopinko]

35. oh please. he knew how he was gonna end this day when he walked in the door.

if he didn't, he had all day to play out the fantasies in his head.

they controlled the clock, until the chairman dropped the gavel. he knew that.
c'mon.

[yaesu]

36. wishful thinking, it was just getting too late, it will be voted on in the morning, go to the senate

where the fascists will turn it into a rerun of i love lucy only lucy will be tRump.

[Kablooie]

37. That would be nice but I read that they won't be able to be released to the public.

The tax returns will only be available to the parties directly involved in the investigation and they will not be able to reveal the contents to anyone else.

[pbmus]

38. At this point, republicans will use his tax returns as a badge of honor...

2020 is going to be one hell of a ride....

[TeamPooka]

39. Nope. They just didn't want to hold a vote in the dark of night, as a means of difffusing that

complaint later

[wnylib]

41. I think R's dragged out the process intentionally

for 2 reasons. First, for melodramatic grandstanding of their talking points.repeated over and over. Second, to have a late night vote that they could add to their talking points about Dem secrecy.

Nadler pulled the rug out from under the second reason. They were angry that their orchestrations failed and they dragged it out for nothing, since Dems got to respond with facts everytime the R's repeated their spin.

I do not see how a SCOTUS ruling tomorrow would change anything in a process that will be wrapped up tomorrow. Would the committee suspend the vote to take time to review the ruling and amend the articles? This would take some time to do and be risky without knowing what is in the material to be released, if it is released.

[bearsfootball516]

43. I doubt it.

I believe what they said. A vote of this significance should happen during the day when the public is aware, and not in the middle of the night.

[former9thward]

45. Uhh, no....

Supreme Court will take up Trump’s broad claims of protection from investigation


https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-will-take-up-trumps-broad-claims-of-protection-from-investigation/2019/12/13/1de84cd6-1d19-11ea-8d58-5ac3600967a1_story.html?wpisrc=al_news__alert-politics--alert-national&wpmk=1

I guess that clerk had bad info.......