SEASON 2 EPISODE 33: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:43) SPECIAL COMMENT: 

The impeachment inquiry Kevin McCarthy has now unilaterally and personally declared against President Joe Biden is, in fact, illegal.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel – The TRUMP Administration Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel – ruled, on January 19th, 2020, that there can be no impeachment and no impeachment inquiry without… a vote. And that ruling is still on the books. Today. And Kevin McCarthy has violated it. Kevin McCarthy has broken the law. It’s Kevin McCarthy’s ILLEGAL IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY. 

Steven A. Engel, Assistant Attorney General Office of Legal Counsel. Same guy who wrote Bill Barr’s Muller summary for him, wrote: “The house of representatives must expressly authorize a committee to conduct an impeachment investigation and to use compulsory process IN that investigation before the committee may compel the production of documents of testimony in support of the House’s power of impeachment…the House itself must authorize an impeachment inquiry… no committee may undertake the momentous move from legislative oversight to impeachment without a delegation BY THE FULL HOUSE of such authority."

Kevin McCarthy also wrote in 2019 that an impeachment inquiry without a vote is invalid. And he said it again TWELVE DAYS AGO. So any Democrat responding to this latest Republican urination on the constitution on behalf of Dementia J. Trump by NOT calling this a quote “ILLEGAL IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY” should be expelled. From the party, from office, from the country. McCarthy didn’t just break the rules, he just broke Trump rules and that fact should be hung around his neck every morning like one of those floral leis you get when you arrive in Hawaii. “Hello Mr. Speaker? And how’s your illegal impeachment inquiry TODAY?”

And then there's the history lesson McCarthy needs to know about the last Speaker to try to make an impeachment out of nothing. Newt Gingrich impeached Bill Clinton - and lost HIS job while Clinton kept his. And then Gingrich's successor lost his job before even officially starting it. And then HIS successor wound up in prison for child rape.

As an aside: Rudy Giuliani is complaining about betrayals of the real meaning of 9/11 this year: who gets to speak first at the memorial.

B-Block (26:29) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: All this Rudy and Clinton and Gingrich talk got me nostalgic for a quarter century ago, when in my third month in the news business I went - in one week - from “why haven’t I seen you on SportsCenter lately" to “Good Evening, I’m anchoring live coverage of the State of the Union Address.” How to succeed in political broadcasting without really trying!

C-Block (39:20) GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK: An Aaron Rodgers postscript