According to a columnist for the Daily Beast, the Democratic House member's decision to vote on contempt of Congress charges against Attorney General Bill Barr is a necessary first step that will allow them to eventually impeach him if necessary.
Michael Tomasky states that holding Barr in contempt is the least the Democrats can do to the AG for shirking his constitutional duties by becoming President Donald Trump's de facto lawyer.
"Tuesday’s vote isn’t just symbolically nailing some hapless AG to the cross to make him bleed in public for a few hours," the political pundit wrote. "This is part of an investigation into genuine presidential obstruction of justice. And it involves both Trump’s attorney general and his former White House counsel [Don McGahn], who is described in the Mueller Report as saying that the president directed him to obstruct justice."
According to the columnist, approval of the contempt charge makes it easier for Congress to drag Barr into court and, eventually, to impeach him.
"That’s why the wording of this resolution, which goes beyond censure of Barr and McGahn, is important," he explained. "It sets in motion future court battles, and it adds a shortcut for future legal confrontations with the Trump administration in that future resolutions of this sort will not require passage by the full House, but merely approval by a five-member panel of House leaders, led by Speaker Pelosi."
Then there is the prospect of impeachment.
"Assuming Barr doesn’t budge, the next step against him should clearly be impeachment," Tomasky wrote. "That he is failing to uphold the duties of his office is laughably obvious. Indeed, he took the job only for the reason of mocking the duties of the office—so that he could insulate Donald Trump from the proper, lawful execution of those duties."
As an aside, Tomasky mentioned that McGahn, who has already resigned and is ignoring a Congressional subpoena on White House orders, can't be impeached, but, as he wrote, he should be dragged along as a matter of law.
"McGahn? He can’t be impeached," he wrote. "But he can be disgraced. What the Democrats need to understand here is that the contempt vote is not the end of anything. It’s the beginning. Holding the two attorneys in contempt is step number one in bringing them before the bar of justice—in working what remains of their consciences, which in Barr’s case particularly seems to be pretty close to nothing, and in forcing them to capitulate to what both surely know is a justified pursuit of the truth, and threatening them with a pretty bad next 10 or 20 years if they don’t."
You can read the rest here.
