WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee will resume impeachment hearings Monday morning, kicking off a historic week of congressional action that could see them send articles of impeachment to the full House.

Last week, we asked for your input on the attempted impeachment of President Donald Trump and you responded with quantity and quality — dozens of emails asking smart and informative questions about a rare event that can, at times, be complicated. Now, reporter Justin Wingerter does his best to answer them.

“How does the White House staff have the right to legally ignore Congress (subpoenas) to testify? How is that not considered obstruction?”

To answer the first question, it’s not clear that they do. Democrats subpoenaed Don McGahn, the former White House counsel, to appear before the House Judiciary Committee. He didn’t appear and a court battle ensued, which has, for the most part, gone the Democrats’ way.

To answer the second question, there are certainly some legal experts and House Democrats who believe it is obstruction. This came up at last Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing and again in interviews I did with Colorado congressmen late last week.

“Denying your staff the right to come over and testify when they’ve been subpoenaed, and to stall and stonewall information, I think is obstruction of Congress,” Rep. Ed Perlmutter, an Arvada Democrat, told me Friday.

Republicans, meanwhile, think the White House’s refusal to cooperate doesn’t rise to the level of obstruction of Congress. They have argued that it’s only obstruction if a court orders the Trump administration to comply and the administration then ignores a court order.

“Why are Democrats wasting so much time trying to impeach Mr. Trump? He didn’t do anything that every president in the last 100 years hasn’t done.”

Rep. Ken Buck, R-Windsor, one of two Coloradans on the Judiciary Committee, made a very similar argument last Wednesday about abuse of power. His somewhat cynical, historical argument was that every president has used the presidency to his political advantage.

“Can you name a single president in the history of the United States — save President Harrison, who died 32 days after his inauguration — that would not have met the standard of impeachment for our (Democratic) friends here?” Buck asked a law professor during the hearing.

Buck has not entirely absolved Trump — or, for that matter, other presidents. As he said in a radio interview a day after the hearing, “What (Trump) did, I don’t think is something we should aspire to as a country.” But he doesn’t think it was an impeachable offense or all that unusual.

“Did the Mueller report indicate whether Trump’s tax returns were seen or requested? If not, why not?”

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, which you can find here or at your neighborhood bookstore, made no mention of the president’s tax returns. As you’ll recall, this was a source of much speculation during the Mueller investigation, and a fair number of people were disappointed that Mueller’s team did not follow the money in that manner.

When the special counsel testified before Congress over the summer, he was asked if he had acquired Trump’s tax returns. “I’m not going to speak to that,” Mueller said then. A follow-up question was whether the president’s personal taxes were outside the purview of his investigation. Mueller’s answer: “I’m not going to get into that.” So, to answer both your questions: I don’t know.

House Democrats, meanwhile, are fighting a court battle for the tax returns and that fight could be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. Oh, and some New York prosecutors are also seeking them.

“I am curious about why the committee is not pushing harder to compel people who have been called to testify and who have refused. Will they speak to that in public? Why have they given up so easily?”

“The committee” here could refer to a number of committees and still be a good question. I’ll assume it’s House Intelligence or House Judiciary, the two primary impeachment committees.

The committees are pushing fairly hard, to the point of battling in court over this. As mentioned above, the House Judiciary took former White House counsel Don McGahn to court and won, though the case is on appeal. The downside to court cases, of course, is that they take time. Democrats have opted not to wait for McGahn or others to testify as they march toward impeachment.

“Why are the Republicans stonewalling obvious malfeasance and abuse of the Constitution? Bribery is bribery no matter what you call it.”

The short answer to the first question is that they say they do not consider the president’s actions to be obvious malfeasance and an abuse of the Constitution.

Your second sentence raises an important question: How do we define these alleged violations? And that’s why the House Judiciary Committee held its hearing last week with four constitutional scholars: to define terms such as bribery for the purpose of impeachment, or what some have referred to as “constitutional bribery.” During a break in the hearing, I asked Rep. Joe Neguse, a Lafayette Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, if the hearing was helpful in that regard.

“I do think that the professors have outlined a definition of constitutional bribery that is clear and concise and one that this committee is now going to have to consider as it weighs the evidence applied against that standard,” Neguse told me.

Republicans have argued that you can look at the criminal code and apply the same definitions there to articles of impeachment, such as bribery. Democrats have argued there’s a different standard for firing a president than sending someone to prison. As with nearly everything relating to impeachment, the answer is that Congress defines what it is, and there’s very little precedent.

Denver Post reporter Justin Wingerter will be in Washington all week continuing to cover events there. Email him at jwingerter@denverpost.com with questions.