Thread by @BradMossEsq

I am getting real tired of these incessant comments about "due process" being required in the House impeachment inquiry right now, and about the precedent from the Nixon and Clinton impeachment inquiries. People are messing up their history and it needs to be clarified.

1) There is no requirement in the Constitution that an impeachment inquiry be conducted in any certain way. Article I simply says the House has the sole power of impeachment. That's it. It doesn't delineate a process or rules. The House *can* take a formal vote to launch an

impeachment inquiry, and if they do so under existing House rules there are additional due process rights afforded to the President, but there is no *requirement* that the House ever take that path, let alone at this point in time. They can do the inquiry however they deem fit.

2) The common refrain is to point to the formal vote to open the impeachment inquiry into Nixon as evidence of a best practice. What people forget is that the House's inquiry was just one part of the ongoing investigation: the Special Counsel's probe was still ongoing at that

time and, in the end, it was the Special Counsel's work (not that of the House impeachment committee) that really spelled the end of Nixon. It was the Special Counsel who dislodged the "smoking gun" tape, not the House. Indeed, prior to that tape coming out, there was a lot of

pressure on House Dems by Nixon and his Republican allies to shut down the House probe. Remember "one year of Watergate is enough"?

3) The Clinton precedent is no better. The formal vote to convene impeachment hearings in the Clinton matter came only after Ken Starr had

spent years conducting his Independent Counsel probe, free from public view. Starr had subpoena and grand jury authorities not available to the House. His interviews with witnesses were not done in public. By the time the House Republicans went for their formal vote, the

hard work of investigating the facts and fleshing out the story had already been done by Starr and was memorialized in his extensive written report. There wasn't much for the House to do but discuss the report and vote on Articles of Impeachment.

4) The current situation is

different. There is no Special Counsel looking into this, and there is no Independent Counsel statute anymore. There is only the House. They have to conduct their inquiry and figure out what the facts are before they even formally decide whether to proceed to actual impeachment.

There will eventually be public hearings on this if we get that far, and the president will be afforded his due process rights at that point in time. But there is no right to have that process yet, and the demand to conduct this all in the open now defies the realities of how

an investigation is usually performed.

Can Pelosi decide to proceed to a formal vote? Sure, she can. There are political reasons to call the president's bluff, even, as I have noted before.

But is there any requirement that she do so? Absolutely not. /end