Thread by @HoarseWisperer

Much discussion afoot about House Dems' document requests targeted at 81 names.

One interesting tidbit:

Rep. Nadler, et al, are asking the targets to turn over only docs they have ALREADY turned over to Mueller, SDNY, etc. (see opening para)

1/
judiciary.house.gov/sites/democrat…

By taking this approach:

1) Executive privilege is moot - the target parties can't easily balk at production on executive privilege grounds because they've already produced these docs for other parties. If they weren't privileged then, they aren't privileged now.

2/

2) House Dems stand to get hasty access to a trove of evidence already produced for investigations by the Special Counsel and U.S. Attorneys in the Southern District of New York...

They stand to get at least some of the documentary evidence that will inform Mueller's report.

3/

3) They gather evidence about Trump, Junior, Ivanka, and Eric without making a request directly of them.

Instead, the requests ask EVERYONE ELSE to produce communications with any of those parties on myriad subjects on the basis that they effectively comprised the Trump Org.

4/

I'm still thinking this one through but it seems to me Rep. Nadler, et al, cooked up a way of playing a very hasty catch-up after two years of obstruction by congressional Republicans.

They've crafted a means to both bypass challenges and vacuum up a mountain of docs quickly.
5/

Per Nadler on Maddow tonight, some of the target parties are already complying and producing documents as requested.

After all, when the request merely asks for copies of documents already produced for other investigations, there's little more to do than make copies.

6/

I feel like there's something more afoot here that hasn't sunk in yet but at first blush, it looks like House Dems found a way to go from 0-100 mph in 6 seconds and nearly instantly make up for a ton of lost time under Devin Nunes, et al.

Interesting.

7/7

p.s. the target parties could balk at the requests but with Dems having subpoena power, the recipients would reasonably anticipate that an unanswered request would turn into a subpoena... So, these requests have something closer to the weight of soft subpoenas IMHO.

The full list of targets and requests can be found at the link below.

Each target received a letter/list detailing a set of topic areas. At first blush, the lists appear to be a combo of templated and tailored. Meaning, they aren't one-size-fits-all.
judiciary.house.gov/story-type/let…

They appear to be largely boilerplated but at least somewhat tailored to each recipient.

Safe to say, Nadler, et al, have been loading the cannon for months and are firing out carefully crafted requests that balance specificity with speed of response.

Lastly, in the interest of accuracy, not all of the requests specifically ask for production on matters related to the Trump Org (and therefore Ivanka, Junior, et al) but the original point above stands: they're getting at the Trumps by asking ABOUT them rather than asking THEM.