Howell doesn’t just give the Congress what they requested because they have every legal right to the information sought, she makes it abundantly clear that she is doing so because:

… the President’s written responses to questions posed by the Special Counsel’s Office were “generally” not only“inadequate and incomplete,” but also “showed that he wasn’t always being truthful.”

And because:

… the President refused “to provide written answers to questions on obstruction topics or questions on events during the transition.”

In addition, Howell pointed out how the actions of multiple members of Trump’s White House, including Attorney General William Barr, to block the release of materials to the House committees. In speaking directly to the grand jury materials, Howell certainly pulls no punches:

The Department of Justice (“DOJ”) claims that existing law bars disclosure to the Congress of grand jury information. … DOJ is wrong. In carrying out the weighty constitutional duty of determining whether impeachment of the President is warranted, Congress need not redo the nearly two years of effort spent on the Special Counsel’s investigation, nor risk being misled by witnesses, who may have provided information to the grand jury and the Special Counsel that varies from what they tell HJC.

Overall Howell makes her ruling particular strong, particularly clear, and particularly expansive precisely because the Trump White House has taken so many actions to obstruct previous investigations, order staffers into silence, and lie to both the Congress and the special counsel. Trump and his associates have pushed the bounds of resisting a judicial inquiry far beyond the legal bounds, and now the judiciary has snapped back on those efforts. Powerfully.

In large part, Howell’s ruling may also be thought of as one of the best analysis to date of the actual contents of the Mueller report. Her review of that report is likely to become the critical interpretation of those parts of the report that speak to obstruction, as well as how the White House and William Barr have used outtakes from the report to distort its overall findings.

Finally, if the impeachment inquiry is legally secure from being blocked by the Senate, White House, or any court, there is a critical component of this investigation—going back to and including the Mueller investigation—whose legality is in serious doubt. That is the now infamous position of the Office of Legal Counsel that a sitting executive cannot be indicted. Trump’s attorney’s tried to press that ruling to its ridiculous conclusions in their hearing before Howell, arguing that, yes indeedy, Trump really could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without facing investigation. In his testimony, Robert Mueller took this ruling to equally an ludicrous degree by claiming that, in spite of all evidence uncovered, it would be “unfair” to even state that Trump should have faced charges.

Judge Howell blasted that entire cloud of fog directly out of the sky, making it clear that:

This OLC legal conclusion has never been adopted, sanctioned, or in any way approved by a court.

The entire legal theory that Trump cannot be indicted is no more than that, a legal theory. It’s never been so much as carried through an actual courtroom. In fact, the closest thing to testing this theory is likely the hearing that was just held before Judge Howell, and her brief statement on this issue suggests that this particular bit of Trump armor is about as thick as the paper it’s written on.