Right, except that has no bearing on what they said and what I'm outlining. Strategy by either side has no bearing as both sides have done things purely for strategic and political purposes. It's only what's constitutional and legal that has any bearing. So, it goes something like this I think.
They had no right to issue subpoenas for impeachment unless the house authorizes it. Which they didn't. i.e. the subpoenas don't carry the weight of an impeachment until such time as the house actually has authorized it. The Democratic argument has been "we can do what we want since we have sole power" which is correct.. Except it wasn't "we". Without a house vote, there is no we.
The committees however do have the right to issue subpoenas for legislative oversight. But the democrats stated in their letters that it was for impeachment. The Democrats then argue that there is precedent in that there have been other inquires done without a vote. The lawyer said yes that's true, but there was no compelling of documents and testimony. i.e. no subpoenas in those instances and thus no precedent. That's the first time I had heard that and that's why I'm re-looking at this.
I'm not totally confident here, but I think whats constitutional and legal is theoretical in these cases (subpoena and house vote examples). Just because you can find one way to thread the unprecedented needle doesn't mean that it is or is not legal or constitutional. It would be one thing if there was already a ruling that 'a congressional subpoena is not valid if impeachment is mentioned but the House hasn't voted to begin an inquiry.' And if that were the case, they could've just not mentioned impeachment.
If you only consider this argument: 'We sent them subpoenas, they didn't respond.'
Then it's not that unreasonable to defend with: 'We didn't think the first few were valid because there was no vote, and we granted total immunity on the other ones'
But if the argument includes:
A) The President told us he would not respond to any request no matter and ordered the entire executive branch not to cooperate with us.
B) He was planning to drag every single subpoena through multiple courts, multiple times, making it impossible to get a ruling within X amount of time.
C) There is a valid reason that this trial needs to take place before X amount of time or The President will greatly benefit directly from what he's being tried for in X amount of time.
Then that's a pretty strong argument, although unprecedented, that the President is literally stripping Congress of their power to provide oversight.
side note: I really don't get how it's possible for someone to make it take so long to get a ruling for something that could be incredibly urgent. Seems like something the needs to be fixed, otherwise a President has free range to do whatever the hell he wants 12 months before the election, including literal crimes to influence the election, as long as he's successful at getting reelected and getting 34 of his friends in the Senate he can't be held accountable.
Funny moment in the trial just now.
Schiff claimed there's a subpoena going through federal court right now, as in like literally this very moment.
"So the judge says, 'Well if the Congress can’t enforce its subpoenas in court, then what remedy is there? And the Justice Department lawyer’s response is: 'Impeachment. Impeachment.' You can’t make this up!"
No one is saying Congress can't enforce its subpoenas in court. The subpoenas HAVE TO be sent through the courts in order to be enforced. The president is exercising executive privilege. Until it goes through the court, The President has every constitutional right to exercise executive privilege. Since he has every right to do this, simply exercising his constitutional authority is in no way able to be construed as obstruction. That is why the subpoenas must be decided in court. To do otherwise would be to strip the executive branch of its power, giving all authority to The Congress, which is a co-equal branch. You cry about congress supposedly being stripped of oversight in the very same breath that you try to strip the executive of its authority. The office of the president was not meant to be a parliamentary system serving at the pleasure of the Congress. The Congress can not issue a subpeona, then unilaterally decide upon the validity of the subpoena they just issued. That is asinine.