As Congress returns from recess, impeachment talk is once again in the air. Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn't want a vote on impeachment because she recognizes that it is so unpopular outside the deep blue districts where Trump hatred rules that it could unseat many of the swing-district Democrats whose 2018 victories handed her the speaker's gavel. Nonetheless, House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler is desperate to appear to his constituents as though he is fighting for impeachment and making progress, with a vote scheduled on formalizing procedures for an impeachment inquiry.

The reason for Nadler's desperate pandering to the impeachment fever swamp faction of the party is clear. He is scared to death that he will follow the fate of Joe Crowley and be defeated in the primary election by an attractive young female who is mounting a well financed campaign against him. From the New York Times:

Lindsey Boylan, a former aide to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, has raised more than $250,000 for her challenge to Mr. Nadler — a remarkable sum for a first-time candidate. ($56,000 is earmarked for a general election and cannot be used in the primary; dozens of her donors have also given the maximum amount of $2,800.) Ms. Boylan has also lent $75,000 to her campaign and has hired Peter Daou, a former top aide to Hillary Clinton, as a senior adviser.



Lindsey Boylan (photo credit: Twitter).

The senior Republican on the committee, ranking member Doug Collins of Georgia, speaking with Maria Bartiromo yesterday on Fox News, in her exceptionally good weekly program Sunday Morning Futures, laid out the possibly that his chairman may have misled a federal court in representations made regarding the subpoena for the records of former White House counsel Doug McGhan. In the excerpt below, you can hear him say Nadler claimed in a filing to the court that the committee had proper procedures in place to protect grand jury material, which by law must be strictly confidential. Collins avers that this was not the case and that "we made a letter to him that said you don't have this. Now this resolution [the one formalizing procedures — see the link above —TL] seems to be addressing that issue. I want to know if they're going to go back in court and say, 'Sorry, judge, we lied.'"



YouTube screen grab

If you or I lied to a judge in a filing, there would be serious legal consequences, perhaps a fine and incarceration, for our legal system depends on absolute truth in filings to the courts. Perhaps an Ethics Committee complaint is also in order.