A Republican-led Senate panel provided a three-hour platform for allies of President Donald Trump to dispute the results of the 2020 election, with the hearing at one point devolving into a shouting match between the top Republican and Democrat on the committee.

Throughout the partisan clash, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Ron Johnson argued the forum was simply to evaluate information, while Democrats like Gary Peters countered it was giving oxygen to conspiracy theories undermining U.S. democracy.

GOP-called witnesses, including two Trump campaign lawyers described rampant fraud in Nevada, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, some of which had been considered and scrapped in court, others of which had no basis.

The one witness called by Democrats, the Trump administration’s former top election security official Christopher Krebs, served as a counterweight. He urged Americans to put baseless election disputes behind them and warned that false conspiracy claims had fueled violent threats to election officials — including himself.

“I think we’re past the point where we need to be having conversations about the outcome of this election,” said Krebs, who ran the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security agency until Trump fired him last month. The attacks from Trump and his GOP allies on the election, he said, are “ultimately corrosive to the institutions that support elections.”

Krebs issued his plea at a hearing that grew increasingly contentious, while Johnson insisted without evidence that fraud had undoubtedly occurred at an indeterminable scale. It was Johnson’s last hearing as chair of the panel, and while he offered some words of comity to his Democratic colleagues, he also sparred bitterly with Peters, the ranking member.

"You lied repeatedly in the press that I was spreading Russian disinformation,” Johnson said, after Peters sharply criticized Johnson's decision to hold the election hearing. He accused Peters, instead, of being guilty of spreading disinformation by lodging the accusation in the first place.

“I can’t sit by here and listen to this and say — this is not disinformation at this hearing today,” Johnson said. “We’re not going to be able to just move on without bringing up these irregularities.”

When Peters shot back to disagree, Johnson cut him off and said, “You lied.”

“This is not about airing your grievances. I don't know what rabbit hole you're running down,” Peters said. “This is terrible what you’re doing to this committee.”

“It’s what you have done to this committee,” Johnson said.

“This is outrageous,” Peters retorted.

Johnson also turned over the hearing to three GOP-called witnesses who lodged sweeping, unsupported — and in some cases altogether discredited — claims of election fraud.

The announcement of the hearing stoked significant concern among election security experts and Democrats that Johnson was providing a platform to Trump’s efforts to delegitimize Biden’s win, particularly as he a weighs a reelection bid in 2022 that would lean on Trump’s Wisconsin supporters.

“Whether intended or not, this hearing gives a platform to conspiracy theories and lies. It is a destructive exercise that has no place in the United States Senate,” said Peters (D-Mich.).

Krebs was the lone Democratic witness on the panel, which also featured Trump impeachment attorney Ken Starr, Trump campaign lawyers Jesse Binnall and James Troupis, and Election Assistance Commission member Donald Palmer, a Trump appointee. He batted down some of the most extreme claims of fraud that had emerged — often propagated by Trump himself — since the election.

“Some people just don’t want to hear how these systems actually work and what’s actually capable across these systems,” Krebs said, emphasizing that paper receipts that accompany election systems in nearly every state in the country help minimize the prospect of fraud.

Krebs also described a worsening climate of threats against elections workers, fueled by the false fraud claims, that he worried would have a “chilling effect” in future cycles. Peters added that Krebs himself was the subject of some of those threats, which “required us to make some arrangements for your security to be here today to testify in person.”

Johnson said that he hoped no one would portray the hearing itself as encouraging these types of threats. “Nobody should condone it. Certainly not this committee, certainly not this chairman,” he said.

The hearing also provided an opportunity for Trump’s Senate allies to stoke the unsupported claims of election irregularities that they said had led to a loss of confidence in the election results, without mentioning Trump’s weeks-long campaign to drive up such distrust.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said the president’s court losses were largely on technical grounds and therefore shouldn’t be viewed as conclusively defusing the fraud claims. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said he’s often asked by Floridians, “How is this different than what Maduro is doing?”

Shortly after the hearing, Trump tweeted in support of Paul's claim that the election was "stolen" and slammed Krebs, who he falsely said had been "excoriated" at the hearing. "Chris Krebs was totally excoriated and proven wrong," Trump tweeted, before listing a litany of baseless fraud allegations.

The hearing followed weeks of legal efforts by the president to amplify false and baseless claims of election fraud, which have been trailed by a remarkable string of legal failures. The Trump campaign and its allies have seen dozens of suits tossed in courts — some on technical grounds and others for lacking substance. Judges, in some cases Republican appointees, issued stirring rebukes of the Trump-driven efforts and castigated his team for seeking to sow doubts and disenfranchise millions of voters with evidence-free allegations.

As the losses mounted, Trump began leaning on GOP-led legislatures in the states he lost to hold similar hearings to air claims of fraud that had been discredited or debunked.

The hearing also comes as Senate Republicans have slowly begun to publicly acknowledge Biden’s victory, after weeks of silence amid Trump’s resistance. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell congratulated Biden Tuesday, and Johnson himself said the outcome appeared assured, and that even the fraud he asserted occurred would not be enough to affect the outcome.

Johnson sought to head off criticism at the outset, insisting his hearing was just about seeking “information” and “should not be controversial.” But it became clear that the witnesses he called were intent on continuing to seed false claims about fraud or misconduct in the execution of elections in key states.

"This is real. This happened. We have to address it," Binnall said, as he described tens of thousands of allegedly fraudulent votes in Nevada — many of which were rejected by local and state judges as lacking evidence.

Eric Geller contributed to this report.

A top House Democrat has subpoenaed four senior aides to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, accusing them of resisting interviews in an investigation of President Donald Trump's firing of State Department Inspector General Steve Linick.

House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) issued the subpoenas Monday to Brian Bulatao, the undersecretary of State for management and a longtime Pompeo associate, as well as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Mike Miller, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Marik String and senior adviser Toni Porter.

The subpoenas are an escalation in the committee's confrontation with the State Department, which has resisted repeated oversight attempts by the committee since Democrats' impeachment investigation last year.

"The Administration continues to cover up the real reasons for Mr. Linick’s firing by stonewalling the Committees’ investigation and refusing to engage in good faith," Engel, House Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a joint statement. "That stonewalling has made today’s subpoenas necessary."

Bulatao is seen by Democrats as a linchpin in their investigation, an enforcer of sorts for Pompeo who Linick said attempted to bully him into shying away from sensitive investigations about Pompeo's use of taxpayer resources and stewardship of an arms sale to Saudi Arabia. The other aides, Democrats say, were aware of the circumstances of Linick's departure or of the two investigations that he said raised questions about Pompeo's actions. Linick testified to the House Foreign Affairs and House Oversight and Government Reform committees last month, leading the panels to request interviews with Bulatao and the other aides.

Bulatao had been slated to appear on July 2, but Democrats deferred to a State Department request for a delay on the eve of his testimony, citing the need to review the recently completed inspector general's report on the Saudi arms sale. Democrats also agreed to postpone the other witness depositions until after Bulatao's appearance, but by Monday their patience had run out.

In a required letter to Congress after removing Linick, Trump said he had lost confidence in the department's watchdog. But when pressed directly, Trump said he removed Linick at Pompeo's request and knew little about the details of the inspector general's work. State Department aides have pushed back on suggestions that Pompeo or Bulatao acted improperly, alleging that Linick himself was the one acting improperly. Pompeo recently told reporters Linick was a "bad actor" in the department and wasn't adequately fulfilling the role of IG.

The State Department blasted the subpoenas in a lengthy statement, calling claims of stonewalling “outrageous.”

“The Department has been offering good faith proposals to satisfy their oversight inquiry since May 28, 2020,” a department spokesperson said. “Related to this inquiry regarding Steve Linick, we have offered a briefing, an open hearing before both House Committees with the Under Secretary for Management, a briefing for Members on the Office of the Inspector General’s review of the implementation of the Arms Export Control Act, and we have provided a very clear path for every individual requested to engage with the Committees. All of the offers have been rejected, manipulated by the Committees, or outright ignored.”

The escalation between the committees and the State Department follows what had seemed to be a breakthrough last week, when Pompeo's executive secretary, Lisa Kenna, told senators she would commit to appearing before investigators on Aug. 7, part of a package deal with other witnesses involved in the probe. That agreement marked a resumption of tensions between the State Department and the Democrat-led House, which subpoenaed documents from the department amid its impeachment probe but ultimately received none.

In their statement announcing the subpoenas, Engel and Maloney indicated they had secured testimony from a senior State official voluntarily. That official, Charles Faulker, described String's role in the Saudi arms deal, suggesting String helped develop the legal rationale for declaring an emergency that allowed the $8 billion sale to proceed without required congressional approvals.

"According to Mr. Faulkner, Mr. String cited 'rising tensions' in a 'decades-long' conflict among Gulf powers as a basis for such an emergency transfer," the committees indicated.

Last week, Engel subpoenaed Pompeo to produce another set of documents: those the State Department had already shared with Senate Republicans investigating Joe Biden's relationship with Ukraine, part of what Democrats say is a smear campaign that amplifies disinformation about Biden's role in leading diplomacy with a crucial European partner.

The strained relationship between Linick and Bulatao is at the heart of the committee's investigation. Bulatao told the committee that Linick botched an investigation into his own office's handling of a sensitive report about political retaliation inside the State Department, which leaked to the media ahead of its release. Linick was cleared in that probe by Pentagon watchdog Glenn Fine, whom Linick had asked to conduct the review.

Linick told lawmakers he faced pressure to stop probing the Saudi arms sale, which Pompeo allies said was a policy dispute rather than a question of management. Linick said his response was that he was investigating the implementation of the policy, which is within the inspector general's scope. Linick also emphasized that Bulatao was among a small inner circle of Pompeo aides who were informed of his ongoing probe of Pompeo's use of government resources.

Linick was also investigating the role Pompeo's wife, Susan Pompeo, played at the department and whether she and her husband improperly used State Department staffers to run personal errands for them.

Rep. Eliot Engel, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, subpoenaed the State Department Friday demanding copies of documents that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has already provided to Senate Republicans investigating Joe Biden.

Engel indicated he subpoenaed the documents because the department had ignored his initial request to share copies of any material being provided to the Senate. Democrats view the Senate GOP investigation, led by Sen. Ron Johnson’s Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, as an effort to smear Biden on false corruption allegations related to his diplomacy in Ukraine.

“After trying to stonewall virtually every oversight effort by the Foreign Affairs Committee in the last two years, Mr. Pompeo is more than happy to help Senate Republicans advance their conspiracy theories about the Bidens,” Engel said in a statement. “I want to see the full record of what the department has sent to the Senate and I want the American people to see it too.”

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Engel has threatened to subpoena for the documents since May, when Johnson’s probe began ramping up.

Johnson has indicated that a report on his findings could be released this summer, and his panel is also attempting to obtain testimony from top Obama administration national security and diplomatic officials. He has denied that his investigation is meant as a political cudgel or is being influenced by foreign interests seeking to hurt Biden.

The House impeached President Donald Trump last year for pushing Ukraine’s leaders to investigate Biden and other Democrats, and withholding security assistance to the country — amid its war with Russia — to exert pressure.

Trump allies responded by leveling discredited allegations that Biden pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was investigating Burisma, an energy company for which his son Hunter served on the board. State Department leaders testified during impeachment proceedings that Biden’s work in Ukraine was done in accordance with department policy, and that efforts to remove the prosecutor were part of an international push to root out corruption. They also noted that the prosecutor himself was an impediment to investigating Burisma.

More recently, top Democrats have cited intelligence suggesting that at least some of the anti-Biden efforts are being fueled by Kremlin-aligned Ukrainians seeking to interfere in the 2020 election.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer have demanded an all-Congress FBI briefing about intelligence they say shows a specific foreign plot to influence congressional action.

After attending a general election security briefing, Pelosi on Friday morning blasted the administration for “withholding” evidence of foreign interference.

Rep. Devin Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, this week declined to answer a colleague's question about whether he had received derogatory information about Vice President Joe Biden from Andrii Derkach, a Kremlin-linked Ukrainian lawmaker who has worked to foment allegations of corruption by Biden and his son Hunter.

During a closed-door business meeting of the panel on Wednesday — a transcript of which was made publicly available Thursday — Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) pressed Nunes about news reports indicating that he was one of several GOP lawmakers to whom packets of information were delivered from Derkach in December 2019 that contained allegations about Joe Biden. Derkach has confirmed he sent the packages to Nunes, as well as GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

"[M]y question ... is of the ranking member, whether he is prepared to disclose to the committee whether he has received materials that have been called into question in the public reports from Andrii Derkach and, if so, whether he is prepared to share them with the rest of the committee," Maloney asked.

"Does the ranking member wish to respond?" asked House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

"No," Nunes replied.

Maloney responded by suggesting that Nunes's refusal to answer "speaks volumes" and indicated that committee staffers are "in possession of evidence that a package was received."

That evidence, according to committee officials, is in the form of a DHL shipping receipt that was sent to the Intelligence Committee’s majority office shortly after the package was sent to Nunes. The officials say they sought to access the materials from Nunes at the time but that he never agreed to share them.

Nunes' office has declined requests to respond to inquiries about whether he ever received the package or learned of its contents — and whether he or his aides delivered it to the FBI for vetting, which committee Democrats and Republicans say is the typical practice when receiving parcels from foreign sources.

In late January — in the midst of the Senate’s impeachment trial — the committee’s Democratic staff reported the existence of the package to the FBI and has since received no response from the bureau, according to committee officials.

Derkach has provoked growing alarm among Democrats, who have noted his increasingly public efforts to promote anti-Biden allegations, from releasing tapes — whose provenance is unknown — of Biden’s conversations with Ukrainian leaders to holding news conferences to publicly declaring his efforts to unite with GOP officials to take down the former vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Derkach has launched a public website, NabuLeaks, that includes links to materials he has purported to send to top GOP lawmakers. It’s unclear whether the items posted on his site are the same as those sent to Nunes and the other lawmakers.

In a statement to POLITICO last week, Derkach said he sent the materials to the lawmakers and former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney with the goal of “creating an interparliamentary association called ‘Friends of Ukraine STOP Corruption.’” He added that he recently notified Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Grassley, Graham, and Democratic Sens. Gary Peters of Michigan and Ron Wyden of Oregon “about the content and materials published and voiced” at his news conferences. Graham, Grassley, Peters and Wyden indicated they never received materials from Derkach.

Details about the packages, however, were contained in a classified addendum to a letter top House and Senate Democrats released earlier this month demanding that the FBI brief Congress on "specific" evidence of a foreign effort to interfere in the 2020 election. In particular, they described intelligence that a foreign power was seeking to influence congressional actions in a way that was meant to weigh on the election between Biden and President Donald Trump.

POLITICO reported last week that the evidence pertained to pro-Russian Ukrainians and involved the dissemination of the packets from Derkach, who delivered them amid the House push to impeach Trump for pressuring Ukraine to investigate Biden. It's unclear whether the addendum included additional details that might shed light on why Derkach's information — which has been available on his own website for weeks — speaks to a broader foreign interference plot.

Maloney emphasized that the details about the packages he described in Wednesday’s meeting are unclassified, which suggests there is additional information in the addendum that is more sensitive.

The discussion of Nunes' receipt of a packet came after the committee voted along partisan lines to share the classified addendum with the full House. Committee officials say two dozen Democrats requested access to the addendum, requiring a committee response. Republicans voted against sharing the material, calling it an effort to distort and weaponize classified information for political gain. Nunes described the contents of the addendum as "extremely sensitive" and said he was sure the information would leak publicly if the full House were granted access.

"This document contains extremely sensitive information that Democrats will leak if the document is made available to the full House. That is a fact, and that is the intent," Nunes said. "In fact, some of this information may have already been leaked, a matter I hope the FBI is investigating."

Questions about Derkach’s activities have begun to bubble up on both sides of the Capitol.

Derkach’s website lists Secretary of State Mike Pompeo among the Republicans to whom he has sought to provide information. On Thursday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) asked Pompeo whether Derkach is credible, during a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“I don’t want to comment on any particular individual like Mr. Derkach,” Pompeo said. “I will say this. We’re taking seriously the threats that Russia will try to engage in disinformation campaigns.”

When pressed on Derkach, Pompeo added, “There’s still work ongoing and there’s still unsettled intelligence around these things.”

Democrats have also accused Nunes and other GOP lawmakers of conflating allegations of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election — a premise largely rejected by national security and intelligence experts — with Russia’s sweeping Kremlin-backed campaign of disinformation, hacking and leaking emails to damage Hillary Clinton.

During an October impeachment deposition, two months before Derkach’s package arrived, Nunes indicated that Republicans on the panel were “very concerned by Ukraine's actions during the 2016 election, and they have long been a target of our investigation and have continued today to try to get to the bottom of what they were up to in the 2016 election.”

Before the transcript of Wednesday’s House Intelligence Committee meeting was posted publicly, Republican members of the panel spoke to friendly media outlets to allege that Maloney may have violated House ethics rules by raising questions about Nunes.

"He was very rude,” Rep. Rick Crawford of Arkansas told Breitbart News. “Members don’t question other members in hearings. This wasn’t on the agenda for the meeting. It was really inappropriate in my opinion, and pretty childish.”

Breitbart reported that "House GOP leadership lawyers" would consider bringing ethics claims against Maloney, though what violation would be alleged, based on the exchange, is unclear.

In his interview with Breitbart, Crawford appeared to confirm that Nunes receivd a package from a foreign source, and suggested that Nunes turned it over to authorities.

“[I]t’s standard practice that if you get a package from unknown source in a foreign country, it’s probably a good idea to call the FBI and let them handle it and not handle those packages and don’t open them and go, ‘Hey I wonder what this is? I guess it’s Christmas came early this year’," Crawford said. "No, you follow the protocol, which is you turn that over to the FBI. That’s what happened.”

In an interview, Maloney called claims that he violated House ethics absurd and said his goal is to root out foreign interference attempts in the 2020 election, regardless of their source or which candidate they might benefit.

“Russians are still trying to interfere in the election using bogus claims about events in Ukraine. So I don’t know what the secret is,” he said. “What’s in the box, is my question. Just show us and explain why it’s some big secret. We’ve literally got the receipts. The committee received this material. Why wouldn’t he share it?”

The renewed national debate over the purity of America's founders has highlighted an unmistakable truism: the people who have led this country — throughout its glorious and troubled history — are flawed, full of contradictions and far too easily lionized, their sins airbrushed for polite company.

So the arrival of a rapid-fire history of the House’s impeachment of Donald Trump, set to hit shelves Tuesday, provides some notable candor about the figures who led the nation into and through the third-ever Senate trial of a U.S. president.

“A Case for the American People,” by Norm Eisen — an architect of the House Democrats’ impeachment strategy —isn’t shy about its conclusions: Eisen believes in his bones that Trump is a recidivist criminal who must be ousted to save the republic. He also believes that the Democrats who engineered Trump’s impeachments are heroes on par with the founders. The book is, at bottom, an effort to convey those conclusions — and Eisen's centrality to the impeachment effort — to the wider world.

But Eisen’s 280-page chronicle of the impeachment era, replete with his inside-the-room knowledge of how the process unfolded, juxtaposes lawmakers’ lofty pronouncements about protecting democracy with the often provincial tensions and messy House politics that drove decisions of national significance.

Eisen, who signed up as a House Judiciary Committee attorney in early 2019 with an eye toward impeachment, also describes the hail of early “f--- you’s” he delivered to House Intelligence Committee aide Daniel Goldman, who he said had accused him of treading on the committee’s turf. (They would later get past the initial tension, Eisen says). He describes how internal Democratic politics led him to shave a planned 10 articles of impeachment — encompassing a sweeping range of allegations such as “collusion” and “hush money payments” down to three, and then two, after vulnerable Democrats rejected charging Trump with obstruction of justice.

Eisen reveals the sometimes painful conflicts between House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) — in Eisen’s eyes, the unsung hero of impeachment — and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who often resisted Nadler’s lead-foot on the impeachment accelerator. Nadler drew Pelosi’s ire throughout the process by leaning into calls for impeachment faster than the rest of the House was ready for, and Eisen said Nadler had accepted that it would take time to restore his “former level personal warmth” with the speaker.

Eisen is the unlikely narrator for a book about a gloomy period in American history. The preternaturally affable former ambassador often seemed out of place in the take-yourself-too-seriously backrooms of the U.S. Capitol. Eisen can often be found in the backdrop of iconic images of the impeachment hearings and trial, sporting a sly perma-grin beneath a head of tight curls.

He describes his own mischief, at times, noting that when rumors emerged that Pelosi was considering a select committee to wrest the impeachment process away from Nadler, he worked with fellow Nadler staffers to crush the idea.

“We immediately started talking to everybody, from the antiTrump neocon right to the progressive left, to try to put the kibosh on the select committee idea,” Eisen writes. [Nadler chief of staff Amy Rutkin] and I furiously worked our Rolodexes, as did the entire staff.”

Among their successes? Eisen writes that he convinced anti-Trump conservative Bill Kristol to rescind support for a select committee and that Rutkin convinced progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to retweet Kristol’s reversal, adding her own note of urgency to leave the process with the Judiciary Committee.

In short, Eisen’s book is “This Town” for the impeachment era, an x-ray vision view of Washington’s seamy interconnectedness, transplanted to the most consequential stage of all: the floor of the U.S. Senate during a doomed attempt to remove Trump from office.

Eisen — a former ambassador to the Czech Republic and Obama White House’s ethics czar — regales readers with his decades-old entanglements with many of the figures involved in Trump’s trial, from Trump's trial lawyers to even the State Department's impeachment witnesses, like former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who he describes as "my friend and former colleague."

“Judge Ken Starr, the Clinton independent counsel, and Professor Alan Dershowitz. I had worked for Dersh in law school—my first legal job,” Eisen writes. “Starr had also been kind to me when I was a young lawyer and gofer on the Clinton impeachment. Both had visited me in Prague.”

Eisen also self-deprecatingly recounts, during a spate of clandestine pre-impeachment negotiating sessions with White House lawyers, he had an inadvertent run-in with Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway.

“‘Norm Eisen, what are you doing here?’” Eisen recalls Conway asking. “I evaded her question, genuinely concerned she would put the kibosh on the negotiations. After some not-so-gentle teasing back and forth about which of us was more corrupt, she said she was on her way to see the president. “‘I’ll tell him I saw you!’” she said, per Eisen’s telling.

Perhaps most consequentially, Eisen describes an old friendship with Robert Trout, who became longtime Trump aide Hope Hicks' lawyer during the House's quest to investigate Trump. Trout, Eisen said, was "an old friend and mentor" and personally disagreed with the White House's claim that Trump's aides were "absolutely immune" from testifying to Congress, a legal theory that courts have largely rejected too. So Trout became the first lawyer to negotiate in-person testimony for a high-level Trump aide — in exchange for a promise to do it behind closed doors.

"Trout’s offer was a no-brainer," Eisen said.

I spoke with Eisen, who I observed from afar throughout the impeachment process, about dichotomies on display in his book, which I said playfully could also be dubbed “The Gospel of Jerry.” (Someone on Schiff’s team would have to write “The Gospel of Adam” to capture the Intelligence Committee’s side of the story, large swaths of which are omitted here.)

In the interview, Eisen acknowledged telling a Nadler-centric version of events, in part because of his vantage point from the dais of the Judiciary Committee. But it’s also because he describes Nadler as “the least well known and in some ways the most complicated” member of what he calls impeachment’s “Great Triumvirate,” along with Pelosi and Schiff.

The complexity, he said, stems from Nadler’s long history with Trump. The two battled during Nadler’s days as a local New York politico — when Trump was a celebrity developer — and understand each other better than most. It’s why, Eisen posits, Trump called from Air Force One to check in on Nadler in May 2019 after the would-be impeachment manager briefly fainted from dehydration at a public event.

“Shortly after the call, I asked Jerry if he thought Trump was doing it to rub it in or to lord it over him after he felt ill,” Eisen writes. “‘Absolutely not,’ he said without hesitation. Jerry said that Trump sounded lonely and that it was an opportunity for him to make a connection—yes, with an adversary, but nonetheless one who had known him the longest of all of his current primary antagonists.”

Eisen said Trump’s long history with Nadler is another example of the complexities beneath the surface of the impeachment process — everyone knew everyone, sometimes for decades.

“There's a story like that for literally anyone who was involved in this impeachment,” Eisen said in the interview. “This is a small town, it is an industry town. Government is the company store that we all live off of.”

The book is also the story of typically anonymous staffers — some who prefer to remain that way — into the storylines that they help drive and shape for their more powerful bosses. Judiciary Committee fixtures like Perry Apelbaum, Aaron Hiller and Arya Hariharan play featured roles in crafting and pushing the House's impeachment strategy, alongside Eisen and co-counsel Barry Berke.

Eisen recalls Pelosi becoming frustrated during one closed-door meeting — details of which leaked out at the time — because of the efforts Judiciary Committee staff (Eisen included) to drive the House toward impeachment before she and the caucus were ready.

“They may think they run the place, but they do not,'" Pelosi told colleagues, in Eisen's telling. "That’s a caucus decision, not theirs. And you can tell them that."

Eisen writes that the speaker's go-slow approach became a challenge of sorts: to convince her that the case against Trump was so overwhelming that she should reverse. That led to repeated friction with the speaker, who Eisen described as justified in her approach.

"Pelosi was rightly concerned about the whole caucus, including the forty or so front-liners and new members who represented districts that Trump had won and who had given her the majority," he writes. "She had been annoyed with our pushing, which Jerry accepted. We had a job to do, and she had a job to do."

Another undercurrent throughout Eisen’s book is disappointment. He’s consistently let down by figures he viewed as principled who, by the end of the impeachment trial, he came to see as corrupted by the influence of Trump — he names Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein, who (surprise!) Eisen has known since 1993 when he says they vied for the same Justice Department job. But he saves his most unsparing criticism for special counsel Robert Mueller, a figure he said he once revered but who he said let the country down in the aftermath of his investigation of the Trump campaign’s 2016 contacts with Russia.

Eisen, as a Judiciary Committee lawyer, helped lead the drive to bring Mueller to Capitol Hill, but was among those who was underwhelmed by Mueller’s testimony and felt he "abdicated" during the probe by failing to meet the urgency of the allegations against the president.

That frustration carried over, Eisen said, to efforts to secure Mueller’s testimony on July 24, 2019.

“Mueller’s colleagues seemed more concerned about protecting Mueller from questioning than about protecting our democracy,” Eisen writes. “What difference does a pristine reputation make when Rome is burning around you?”

I asked Eisen about renewed efforts by Senate Democrats and Republicans to bring Mueller back to Capitol Hill before the election, and he was quick to reject the view that it could be a do-over of sorts. "He did not finish the job. He did not go to the limits of his prosecutorial authority," Eisen said. "When you're facing down a criminal of the president's nature, that is unforgivable."

The book is at its best when it’s providing a front-row view to the closed-door investigations of the Judiciary Committee or the Senate impeachment trial. Eisen describes a conversation on the floor with Starr and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who would later become the only GOP senator to back Trump’s removal from office.

“Romney told Starr how much he appreciated his presentation, but proceeded to ask him a series of penetrating questions that spoke to a mind that had not been made up,” Eisen writes.

It was his earliest clue, he says, that Romney’s vote was up for grabs, and it helped the House’s impeachment managers tailor their arguments to at least capture his vote, even if the trial itself was lost.

The House Judiciary Committee has teed up a bill that would criminalize a presidential pardon offered in exchange for anything of value — such as a witness' silence — a key addition to legislation already slated for consideration that would empower Congress to investigate potential abuse of the pardon power.

Under the updated proposal from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, a presidential pardon granted — or dangled — in order to obtain a "thing of value" would be punished under federal bribery laws. The restriction would include not just pardons but commutations — reprieves that reduce criminals' prison sentences but maintain their convictions.

The sweeping measure is aimed at curtailing abuses of the pardon power that Democrats allege were committed by President Donald Trump in the commutation granted to his longtime confidant, Roger Stone. Stone was convicted last year of repeatedly lying to the House Intelligence Committee in its investigation of links between Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia — a probe that also examined Trump himself.

Trump has assailed Stone's prosecution as politically motivated, even though the Justice Department repeatedly defended it and Attorney General William Barr called it "righteous." Democrats described Stone's pardon as an unprecedented abuse intended to reward a close ally of the president for frustrating the efforts of investigators looking at Trump's knowledge of a Russian interference effort that damaged his 2016 opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Schiff's proposal also requires that the Justice Department share with Congress any case files connected to a witness or suspect pardoned in an investigation in which the president — or a relative of the president — is a subject, target or witness. Such a requirement would ensure lawmakers have a chance to assess whether the pardon was evidence of self-interest or to mask potentially impeachable conduct.

The measure also includes a second update — an amendment offered by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) that would declare presidential self-pardons invalid.

"The President’s grant of a pardon to himself or herself is void and of no effect, and shall not deprive the courts of jurisdiction, or operate to confer on the President any legal immunity from investigation or prosecution," the amendment reads.

"It is essential that Congress clarify right now that no president of any party can use his pardon power to pardon himself or commute his own sentence," Raskin said in a statement. "If we don’t make that essential constitutional truth clear, a corrupt and incorrigible president could embezzle from the government, take bribes for pardoning criminals, engage in foreign money laundering schemes, commit massive tax fraud, aid and abet sex traffickers, and obstruct justice by covering up all these crimes — and then simply pardon himself or herself to permanently avoid prosecution for these crimes for all time."

Both proposals are certain to face constitutional challenges. Presidential pardon power has largely been unchallenged and construed as sweeping and unreviewable in court. The impeachment power and other checks afford to Congress is the remedy for a president who abuses pardon authority, some legal experts say. However the FBI and Congress have investigated pardons in the past, particularly President Bill Clinton's decision shortly before leaving office to pardon fugitive financier Marc Rich.

And the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel has previously indicated that it doesn't consider self-pardons to be valid. In 1974, days before Nixon resigned, OLC determined that presidential self-pardons are improper. However, Trump has declared that he believes he has the "absolute right" to pardon himself

"As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself," Trump tweeted in June 2018, "but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong?"

Trump made a similar pronouncenment in July 2017: "While all agree the U. S. President has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us."

A second proposal that Democrats intend to advance Thursday would ensure that presidents are unable to run out the clock on the statute of limitations for any crimes committed before or during their tenure of office. The proposal, offered by Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), would essentially pause the clock on the statute of limitations while a president is in office.

The measure is aimed at ensuring that a president who committed crimes prior to assuming the office can still face charges for alleged criminality after stepping down — and can't use the office as a shield from prosecution.

Roger Stone on Wednesday accused two top House allies of President Donald Trump of privately advocating against Trump's decision to keep him out of prison last week.

House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) were among those who advised Trump to consider avoiding clemency for Stone ahead of the 2020 election, worrying it could be bad politics for Republicans, Stone said during an appearance on a podcast hosted by fellow Trump supporter Charlie Kirk.

"Congressman Matt Gaetz from my home state of Florida, who I know was out there when Kevin McCarthy and Elise Stefanik were arguing against any clemency for Roger Stone because it might cost the Republicans seats," Stone said as he listed those who supported his bid to stay out of jail despite his conviction on charges of lying to congressional investigators probing Russian interference in the 2016 election. "I know that Matt Gaetz was standing tall, both privately and in public, on my behalf."

A source familiar with the exchange confirmed that McCarthy and Stefanik were among a group of GOP lawmakers who shared a ride on Air Force One in late May, as Trump traveled to observe the launch of a SpaceX rocket in Florida. When Trump joined lawmakers, the subject of Stone arose. According to the source, Trump revealed quickly that he intended to extend clemency to Stone, his longtime confident and political adviser, but wanted counsel on timing.

Gaetz indicated the president should give Stone an immediate reprieve while McCarthy and Stefanik advised him to consider waiting until after the election, the source said.

Attorney General Bill Barr had advocated against clemency for Stone as well. But Trump ultimately opted to keep Stone out of prison altogether, commuting his sentence on July 10, just four days before he was due to report to a Georgia facility. The commutation left Stone's convictions standing, and he has vowed to keep fighting them on appeal, though Trump could always pardon him fully at a later date.

Stone's indication that McCarthy and Stefanik — two of Trump's most prominent House defenders during the Russia investigation and impeachment inquiry — fought against immediate clemency is notable because few elected Republicans have spoken publicly on the matter. Aides to the lawmakers did not respond to requests for comment.

Of those who did speak, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) called it "unprecedented, historic corruption" and Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) said he disagreed with the decision. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), on the other hand, endorsed Trump's commutation decision, saying it was appropriate because Stone was a first-time non-violent offender.

Stone was convicted last year on multiple counts of lying to the House Intelligence Committee about his efforts to contact WikiLeaks and gain advanced knowledge of its plans to release hacked emails from Hillary Clinton and her campaign advisers. He was also convicted of threatening a witness in the case and was twice rebuked by the judge in his trial for violating gag orders.

Stone was sentenced in February to 40 months in prison, and his efforts to postpone the start of his jail term failed when Judge Amy Berman Jackson rejected a last-ditch attempt to delay his sentence until September.

House Democrats increasingly frustrated by the Trump administration for defying subpoenas are proposing legislation that would ratchet up their power to punish executive branch officials who reject their requests.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), and five other members of the House Judiciary Committee, unveiled a rule change Monday to formalize and expand Congress' power of "inherent contempt" — its authority to unilaterally punish anyone who defies a subpoena for testimony or documents.

Though Congress has long had inherent contempt power, it has been in disuse since before World War II. This power, upheld by courts, has included the ability to levy fines and even jail witnesses who refuse to cooperate with congressional demands.

But such extreme measures have fallen out of favor over the years, as Congress has relied instead primarily on litigation to enforce its subpoenas and officials across government have acknowledged the unappetizing prospect of using force to impose its will. It's even trickier when applied to a coequal branch of government, which may have its own privileges and protections to assert.

But calls for reviving inherent contempt have grown since Democrats reclaimed the House majority last year. Lawmakers on the Judiciary Committee, in particular, have fumed as Trump administration witnesses defied their requests and subpoenas for testimony and documents related to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Lieu's measure is cosponsored by Reps. Val Demings (D-Fla.), Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), David Cicilline (D-R.I.) and Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.).

“We've seen unprecedented and illegal obstruction by the Trump administration to Congress where the administration has essentially directed witnesses not to show up to committees even after they have been given lawful congressional subpoenas,” Lieu said in an interview. “We need an enforcement mechanism.”

Lieu's proposal only focuses on monetary penalties. It would establish a process for negotiations between Congress and executive branch officials when disputes arise over testimony and records. The measure would allow federal agencies to lodge objections to congressional requests, and it would permit the president to weigh in and assert any applicable privileges. The measure would also establish a process for holding recalcitrant officials in contempt, including hearings before the full House in which the subject would be permitted to present a defense and would face questions from lawmakers on the House floor.

If the House supports contempt after such a proceeding, it would then vote a second time to impose a financial penalty of up to $25,000. The penalty would be delayed for 20 days to allow for continued negotiations before subsequent penalties may be imposed up to an aggregate of $100,000. The measure would also bar taxpayer dollars from being used to cover any fines assessed through this mechanism.

Democrats say the measure is a crucial effort to formalize and reinvigorate Congress' long-dormant powers.

Lieu said he is hopeful to implement it quickly but at the very least would like it in future Congress’ toolbox. He said the prospect that inherent contempt would be abused by lawmakers is slim.

“The way to prevent it from being abused is pretty simple: the witness just shows up,” Lieu said.

Inherent contempt became the subject of multiple court fights between the House and President Donald Trump, who has fought congressional subpoenas for his tax returns and financial information.

In those cases, House counsel Doug Letter emphasized that if courts refused to resolve the disputes, it would leave Congress with a slim list of blunt tools to confront an executive branch that’s stonewalling lawmakers. Those tools, which include impeachment, defunding power and the ability to block presidential nominations, would also include — as a last resort — invoking inherent contempt and deploying the House's sergeant-at-arms to enforce the chamber's will. Such a scene would be unpalatable and increase government dysfunction, Letter argued.

Lawmakers are revisiting the issue of inherent contempt in particular as they've renewed their complaints about Attorney General Bill Barr's resistance to testifying before their panel.

Barr has yet to appear before the committee since taking his post in February 2019, despite repeated attempts to arrange testimony. Most recently, Barr has agreed to appear on July 28, amid mounting controversies facing his Justice Department, though some Democrats are still doubtful he’ll appear.

Committee Democrats have demanded answers about his role in directing a forceful response to peaceful protests across the street from the White House at Lafayette Park shortly before a nearby Trump photo opportunity. They've also questioned his effort to replace the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan with a handpicked successor who would have sway over multiple investigations into Trump's associates and interests.

Lieu also cites the refusal of Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs chairman Mark Milley to testify about their roles in the law enforcement and military response to the D.C. protests. The House has also been tied up in court since last summer fighting for testimony from former White House counsel Don McGahn, who ignored a congressional subpoena on the matter. And several witnesses called by the House during last fall's impeachment proceedings also refused to appear, including then-chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and top White House national security lawyer John Eisenberg.

A top aide to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has agreed to testify to lawmakers next week about his role in the abrupt removal of former State Department Inspector General Steve Linick, the House Foreign Affairs Committee announced Monday.

Brian Bulatao, the undersecretary of State for management, has emerged as a central figure in Linick’s ouster, which came as the watchdog was leading multiple investigations into Pompeo’s conduct. Linick told lawmakers that Bulatao — a longtime colleague and confidant of Pompeo’s since their days at West Point — had at times tried to “bully” him about the investigations, particularly a sensitive probe about Pompeo’s role in an arms deal with Saudi Arabia.

Linick was also investigating Pompeo and his wife’s use of government resources for personal errands.

State Department aides have pushed back on suggestions that Pompeo or Bulatao acted improperly, alleging that Linick himself was the one acting improperly. Pompeo recently told reporters Linick was a “bad actor” in the department and wasn’t adequately fulfilling the role of inspector general.

Late Monday, the committee, in conjunction with the House Oversight Committee, revealed an expanding probe: six closed-door depositions will take place over the next month. The first, on June 29, will feature Pompeo's executive secretary Lisa Kenna. On July 8, the week after Bulatao testifies, the committees plan to call Mike Miller, the deputy assistant secretary for defense trade. On July 10, the panels plan to call Toni Porter, a senior adviser in the department. Later in July, the panels plan to call Marik String, a former deputy assistant secretary; Charles Faulkner, a former principal deputy assistant secretary; and R. Clarke Cooper, the assistant secretary of the Bureau of Political Military Affairs.

State Department officials did not respond to a request for comment about Bulatao‘s planned appearance before the House committee.

That appearance, which a committee aide said had been confirmed, will be in a public session of the committee, a high-profile moment as Democrats seek to investigate President Donald Trump’s concerted effort to push back on the independence of inspectors general tasked with rooting out waste and misconduct inside the federal government. Trump told Congress he removed Linick because of a loss of confidence in the watchdog, but he later told reporters that he ousted Linick at the request of Pompeo and knew little about his work.

Bulatao’s planned appearance marks a shift: Senior State Department officials refused to cooperate with House investigators during last year’s impeachment investigation, ignoring subpoenas for documents and testimony from central figures in the probe, including another close Pompeo confidant, State Department counsel Ulrich Brechbuhl.

The strained relationship between Linick and Bulatao is at the heart of the committee’s investigation. Bulatao told the committee that Linick botched an investigation into his own office’s handling of a sensitive report about political retaliation inside the State Department, which leaked to the media ahead of its release. Linick was cleared in that probe by Pentagon watchdog Glenn Fine, whom Linick had asked to conduct the review.

Linick told lawmakers he faced pressure to stop looking into the Saudi arms sale, which Pompeo allies said was a policy dispute rather than a question of management. Linick said his response was that he was investigating the implementation of the policy, which is within the inspector general’s scope. Linick also emphasized that Bulatao was among a small inner circle of Pompeo aides who was informed of his ongoing probe of Pompeo’s use of government resources.

Democrats spent months pretending John Bolton didn't exist after he snubbed their efforts to testify during the impeachment investigation and trial of President Donald Trump.

But not anymore.

Top House Democrats say they're seriously considering whether Bolton should appear before them — either voluntarily or under subpoena — to testify about explosive allegations contained in his new book, including that Trump encouraged China to construct internment camps for Uighurs, urged Chinese President Xi Jinping to purchase American agricultural products in order to help his reelection bid and promised autocrats like Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan that he would do legal favors for an ally facing a U.S. indictment.

"We’ll make a judgment," Speaker Nancy Pelosi said during a Capitol press conference Thursday. "I’ll be meeting with the chairs to make a judgment."

Pelosi slammed Bolton's refusal to testify previously, saving his most damaging evidence for his book, as "a con." But she said the allegations nevertheless dovetail with the House's impeachment charges that Trump was unfit for office. "We’ll be discussing how the American people are best served by oversight," Pelosi said. "The public has a right to know."

Pelosi's comments followed Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, the No. 3 House Democrat, who told CNN Thursday morning that the House "ought to consider" subpoenaing Bolton to hear his allegations under oath.

"I really believe that we may need to get to the bottom of this. Not so much for impeachment. I don't care about impeachment," Clyburn said. "It's for preserving this electoral process that we have, because this president is doing everything he can to undermine fair and unfettered elections in this country. And so I believe John Bolton can do a great service if he were to come now and let the American people know that this election this year is under threat of being invaded once again by a foreign power."

Clyburn's comments came as House Foreign Affairs Chair Eliot Engel (D.N.Y.) and House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) indicated there are revived discussions about "next steps" related to Bolton, now that his book, which the Justice Department is attempting to block from publication, is scheduled to hit the shelves within days.

“We will continue to hold Trump accountable, and work to expose his abuses and corruption. In the coming days, we will be consulting with the speaker and other chairs on next steps," Schiff said of the Bolton revelations.

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans were quick to downplay suggestions that Bolton should be called to testify about his allegations, even those indicating Trump is seeking foreign assistance in his reelection.

"He's trying to sell a book, and we've got so many things that are more important to do that that would not be my priority," Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told reporters. Cornyn said Trump denied the suggestion he sought China's help. "With everything else we have to do, whether it's police reform or Covid-19, I just think those are more important."

On CNBC, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said Oval Office conversations should "remain confidential" so they're able to be "open and candid."

"So I have concerns about ... the way in which this is unfolding," Portman said.

Democrats had largely resigned themselves to ignoring Bolton after he blew off their requests for his testimony during impeachment. Bolton, reportedly, will needle the House in his book for failing to expand the scope of its impeachment probe beyond allegations that Trump abused his power to pressure Ukraine to investigate his Democratic rivals. Though Bolton's book is expected to affirm the Democrats' case, he also indicates other potential foreign policy transgressions that could have been part of the impeachment case.

Democrats never subpoenaed Bolton during the impeachment process, but they did briefly subpoena his former deputy, Charles Kupperman, who shares an attorney with Bolton. But Kupperman fought the subpoena in court, suggesting he was torn between the obligation to speak to Congress and an order from Trump not to testify.

His attorney, Chuck Cooper, made clear that Bolton shared the same view and would similarly fight a subpoena. Ultimately, the House dropped its effort as its case proceeded to impeachment and trial. Other members of Bolton's National Security Council testified willingly under subpoena, a fact that House Democrats repeatedly pointed out amid Bolton's resistance.

After the House's impeachment, Bolton reversed himself and promised to testify during the Senate trial if subpoenaed. Ultimately, Senate Republicans refused to subpoena him, with only Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) joining all Democrats in favor.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that even though Bolton blew off calls to testify during impeachment, his allegations — particularly those about Trump's effort to get Xi to purchase American agricultural products — are credible.

“It fits. Right after Trump signed the deal I was critical of him and ... said it seems that he sold out for a bunch of soy beans which our farmers will never see purchased," Schumer said. "Bolton indicates that that was true, that Trump turned his back on American workers, on American strength, all to help his reelection. And the farmers aren’t even getting helped. Xi played him like a fool."

After Trump's acquittal, Democrats mulled calling Bolton again, but within weeks, the coronavirus pandemic overtook the congressional agenda, and matters related to investigating Trump appeared to move to the back burner.

The House's interest may extend beyond Bolton himself and to the White House's role in trying to suppress his book. Top Trump-appointed intelligence officials intervened in the process and accused Bolton of rushing to print his book without removing highly sensitive classified information. But their intervention came after the official tasked with reviewing his book, Ellen Knight, concluded that it had been scrubbed of classified details.

In a late Wednesday court filing, the Justice Department sought a restraining order to enjoin the book from being printed, even though copies have been distributed and many of its revelations had been obtained and printed by reporters. The court filing included affidavits from Trump's top intelligence and national security officials asserting that Bolton's book was still replete with sensitive intelligence and would harm national security if printed.