The Impeachment Reports released

This has been sort of an odd week in a way in that the public received two, not one, reports out of the House Intelligence Committee this week regarding impeachment.  One's a Republican reply, which came out before the Committee's actual report.  Because of the strict partisan divide, the House Intelligence Committee report is effectively the Democratic report.

The reports are large and available as pdfs on line.  I haven't read them and I'm not going to link them in here. They're easy to find.

None of which means that the process is actually over in the House.  Now the process is back in the Judiciary Committee.

Interestingly, it was taken out of the Judiciary Committee as it was originally thought that the process would be too hot, if you will, over there, but now people think that it may be more judicious in that committee. The Judiciary Committee is apparently going to hear from experts on Constitutional Law before determining whether or not to recommend a bill of impeachment.  It's going to make that recommendation, but the fact that its hearing from experts first on this topic should be, at least for legal junkies, really interesting. 

So basically, the way the process has worked out, Adam Schiff has played the role of prosecutor and Devin Nunes as defense lawyer.  Schiff is the last word in pompous jerk but he's overall done a better job in his role than Nunes.  There's even been some suggestion that he should be the prosecutor in the Senate, although that suggestion has so far been rejected by him.  Anyhow, this leaves the Judiciary Committee basically as the Grand Jury and the presiding Judge.   The speculation is that they'll approve a bill of impeachment by Christmas.

The renewed speculation is that it'll simply be dismissed in the Senate.  That seemed likely to me early on but then that speculation was reversed by the pundits.  It's their opinion, once again. The public, for that matter, seems to have become bored with the entire process.  Interest will resume once the Senate trial starts, but my prediction is it will quickly wane and this entire episode won't be terribly influential in the fall election.