A federal judge on Wednesday rejected the House Judiciary Committee’s bid to formally link two lawsuits they say will expedite their decision to recommend articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump.
The two lawsuits — one seeking access to special counsel Robert Mueller’s grand-jury evidence and another seeking to compel testimony from Mueller’s top witness, former White House counsel Don McGahn — should be considered together, the committee argued, because they both arose from Mueller’s probe and are central to the House’s impeachment deliberations.
But in an 11-page ruling, D.C.’s federal District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell said the connections between the two suits are “too superficial,” and decided that the McGahn case would be randomly assigned to a federal judge.
“[T]he House Judiciary Committee has failed to meet its burden that departure from the practice of random case assignment is warranted,” wrote Howell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
It’s a blow to House Democrats as they inch toward the prospect of impeachment proceedings. Earlier this week, House General Counsel Douglas Letter argued that the two cases should be paired in front of Howell because both seek evidence for a potential impeachment, and both were based on the same set of facts.
But while Howell acknowledged the “factual connections” between the McGahn and grand jury cases, she ultimately sided with the Justice Department.
“[A]t first blush, the House Judiciary Committee’s view that the related case rule applies is understandable due to these factual connections between the two cases. Nonetheless, closer examination demonstrates that these connections between the two cases are too superficial and attenuated for the instant McGahn Subpoena Case to qualify.
”Howell will consider the House’s grand jury petition because such cases are automatically referred to the chief judge.
Howell emphasized that the grand jury petition, as a legal matter, is entirely unrelated to the McGahn case. The House, she noted, intends to protect the secrecy of Mueller’s grand jury information but rely on it to form the basis of potential articles of impeachment. But in the McGahn matter, the House intends to force him to testify publicly, involving an entirely different set of legal principles.
Joining the two cases, she said, would raise the specter that the House had manipulated the process to put its cases in front of a preferred judge.
“The potential for manipulation of the ordinary rule of random assignment would be particularly acute if the House Judiciary Committee could relate any matter arising from its ongoing investigation to a single judge on this court, irrespective of the particularities of each case,” Howell wrote.
Howell also disputed the House’s contention that joining both cases would speed them up.
“Judicial efficiency is not served where two cases present such different factual and legal issues, as is the circumstance here,” she wrote.
Howell’s opinion aligned almost entirely with the Justice Department’s legal arguments lodged Tuesday. In a filing, the Justice Department accused House Democrats of trying to “game the system” and shop around for a friendly federal judge. The department said the twin demands are based on “completely different factual and legal issues.”
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine