Trump v. Pelosi

Rep. Jerry Nadler is giving President Trump until Friday to name his witnesses and decide if he will have White House counsel present in the upcoming House Judiciary Committee hearings on impeachment ... see: Nadler Deadline Letters.

This throwing down the gauntlet is meant to call the Republicans bluff on their complaints lodged against what went on in Adam Schiff’s Intelligence Committee Kangaroo Court hearings last week ... and therefore pose a dilemma for the Trump defenders — put forward a strong defense of Trump in the House impeachment phase ... or wait until the Senate trial where defensive actions can’t be voted down by a partisan Democrat majority.

This Trump vs. Pelosi strategizing all gets very complicated on both sides ... in terms of timing relative to the Horowitz IG report on the FISA court abuses ... and the Barr/Durham ongoing criminal investigation into the predicate for the Russian collusion investigation. Chairman Nadler (really Pelosi) has said that his hearing won’t just be on the Ukraine/Burisma matter but also on the warmed-over Russian collusion issue. How’s that for throwing all the balls in the air?

Clearly, if Trump calls witnesses involved in either of these charges, he could be undercutting their impact upon the public with their revelations ... because such revelations would be forthcoming in a hostile environment where they could be blunted by rulings of the chairman or the full committee votings. This would not be the case in a Senate trial. On the other hand, Chairman Nadler has done a rather ineffective job in previous hearings meant to embarrass Trump: Mueller’s report testimony and the Corey Lewaindowski debacle.

There is even a chance that Pelosi is hoping that the Nadler hearings might be a way of backing Trump down so she might quietly kill this whole impeachment thing ... which has not gone as she and Schiff had expected. In any case, I predict that it won’t be a Pelosi win.

But it should be riveting ...