Case in point!

TDS sufferer Lawrence Tribe is still stoking the impeachment flames!

Savvy House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to spare the Democrats in red and purple congressional districts from facing electoral revolt, gave Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler the go-ahead without first holding a floor vote on whether to conduct hearings into the president’s impeachment. And you can be sure Trump’s lawyers will argue in court that the absence of that politically costly floor vote means the impeachment inquiry does not have the legal superpowers such an inquiry normally acquires — and that are needed to prevail on judicial unsealing of secret grand jury materials and ordering fact witnesses like former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify under oath to what they know Trump did to win office and to cover up what he did to stay there.

That argument could succeed but shouldn’t, and probably won’t. There’s no way courts could avoid the reality or the appearance of being blatantly partisan if they were to muck around in the details of how the speaker of the House chooses to orchestrate the initiation of an impeachment inquiry. And Pelosi’s critics who call her a coward for being subtle about how she is launching this particular inquiry seem to be more interested in the political optics than in the reality of holding this president accountable for his grave offenses against the United States.

Well let's start with the reality that Lawrence Tribe is zero for however many legal predictions he made so far in terms of the investigations into the President.  When Tribe admits that the opposition argument "could" succeed, I would generally put money on the idea that it actually will (just based on Tribe's track record). The reality is that the so-called superpowers of Congressional oversight are not all that super, whereas laws regarding things like Grand Jury testimony are pretty much set in stone.

Tribe seems somewhat unaware that there was a recent decision regarding the release of Grand Jury information that is relevant to this case. The 11th circuit appeals court ruled that Judges had no authority to order the release of Grand Jury information "unless" it specifically related to the named exceptions listed in the law regarding Grand Jury secrecy.

Now I understand that judges being forced to actually follow a law as it's written is a novel concept for many courts (particularly those courts in the 9th circuit), but that is currently what the latest and greatest opinion is stating. That opinion has been appealed, and by most people's guess would likely make it to the USSC, where they will likely side with the most conservative view taken (one that adheres to the law). If one wants to change the law to provide the judicial branch with more power, then by all means give it a try. But good luck with that.

Now one of the six exceptions is providing it to another "judicial proceeding" that is covering the same issues and facts. So if there happens to be another court case where grand jury testimony is deemed relevant, it can quite obviously be provided to the judge and other parties in another case. This is where Congress believes that it can claim that impeachment is a "judicial proceeding" and they would get little argument from legal experts.

But because there is no actual exception for "congressional oversight" of a President, it has to be officially related to an actual impeachment hearing. The question at this point in time is whether or not the Democrats can simply declare an "impeachment inquiry" without actually doing what Congress generally does (which is voting on it and making it official).

The obvious questions are:

• How does this inquiry differ from other inquiries that would otherwise fall under the broader area of simple congressional oversight? 
• Does simply calling an inquiry an "impeachment inquiry" make it so?  
• Isn't it possible that all inquiries could eventually lead to impeachment?  
• Couldn't any and all future congressional oversight inquiries be labeled an "impeachment inquiry" in order to gain extra access to information?

There has to be something more... official or legal... that separates a general inquiry from an impeachment inquiry.

Consider how strange it would be for a court to determine that the Judiciary Committee did not possess whatever special investigatory powers accompany a full-on impeachment proceeding. The law then would absurdly require the House to exercise its “sole power of impeachment” in the dark, without access to the information it needs to make the most serious and fateful decisions. Silly as the legal system sometimes seems, it’s just not that stupid. 

The idea that it would be "partisan, silly, and stupid" to declare that a Judicial Committee impeachment inquiry (which has not gone through any normal congressional channels) is not one of the named exceptions of the grand jury secrecy laws is pretty bold. Tribe is making the emotional argument that liberal attorneys and liberal law experts hang their proverbial hat on. Of course, this very strategy is what has made Lawrence Tribe a big O-for in this one.

Now this is one of those cases that could go either way. But the bigger trouble comes from the fact that Mueller and his merry band of special counsel minions have already seen the grand jury testimony and already wrote a report that included what they knew. There is almost no chance that anything in the secret grand jury testimony that would make much of a difference. Moreover, if congress did garner that information it would still not be made "public". So this looks like little more than an excuse to "extend" talk of impeachment further out into future because certain people just refuse to give up on it.