Donald Trump to refuse to cooperate with impeachment hearing until Nancy Pelosi calls for a vote

  If the House holds an impeachment hearing and nobody voted on it is it still an impeachment hearing? A little twist on an age old question about trees and forests but is it still a hearing?

  The Democrats are telling the American people that they are holding an official impeachment inquiry but there has been no vote on it so it really just seems like business as usual for the do-nothing obstructionist Democrats–they have been investigating the President since they won the majority in the House.

  This maneuver allows the Democrats to throw around the word “impeachment” during the election cycle and scare the American people out of voting for Donald Trump without actually trying to impeach him or putting their members on record, and now Donald Trump is calling their bluff if this story is true.

The White House is planning to send Speaker Nancy Pelosi a letter as soon as Friday arguing that President Trump and his team can ignore lawmakers’ demands until she holds a full House vote formally approving an impeachment inquiry, 2 sources familiar with the letter tell Axios.

By putting in writing the case that Trump and his supporters have been making verbally for days, the White House is preparing for a court fight and arguing to the public that its resistance to Congress’ requests is justified.

• Trump wants to force House Democrats in vulnerable races to be on the record if they favor pursuing impeachment, these sources tell us.
• Republicans also say the minority party can exert more influence over hearings and other aspects of an inquiry once it is formalized with a vote.
• By calling this an inquiry without holding a vote, Pelosi and the Democratic committee chairmen are having it both ways, one official said. “They want to be a little bit pregnant.”

  This is an interesting move but I am not sure how it will play out. The Constitution provides no set guidelines for how the House is supposed to conduct itself in regards to impeachment, it only gives the House power to impeach, so I suppose this falls along the lines of whether or not Nancy Pelosi is following House rules as they are in place.

  It would seem to me that the House would have a set procedure for deciding if and when to hold an impeachment inquiry and would not simply let the leadership dictate to the members what they are going to do, but I honestly do not know.

  If House rules require a vote to proceed than this is nothing but a show investigation akin to the fake investigations the Republicans held during the Obama administration that went nowhere. Will this one go nowhere? Only time will tell, I am not sure a judge will rule the President can ignore a subpoena but we will see.