The point of impeachment hearings is to dribble out damaging information during the election

[Recursion]

Starting them now means it dribbles out too soon. Congress needs to dither around with some preliminary stuff this summer and then really get the hearings going as the D primaries heat up, so that the contrast is not "Democratic division vs. Republican unity" but "Democratic division vs. Trump's piss tape". Then, drop the motherload right before the convention and have him address the RNC having just been impeached.

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. You can do "hearings" without filing for impeachment that can turn into

impeachment, which is what they should do now, probably.

[WheelWalker]

8. Agreed. History teaches.

[unblock]

2. I'd agree if there wasn't enough crap for the next decade

Republicans investigated Hillary for a quarter century on nothing.

Just think what we can do with actual facts!

[honest.abe]

3. Yeah, this sounds like a good plan.

The longer we wait to hold the vote probably the better.

[manor321]

4. No. Trump's crimes continue!

I can't believe how many people miss the fact that Trump's bad behavior continues!

We can't just wait around, with normal hearings, until 2020. The press will get bored and move on. Trump will be emboldened.

The impeachment hearings should start soon and should continue at a pace required to keep the momentum going. They cannot be slowed down so much to drag to late summer 2020.

[StarfishSaver]

5. Impeachment hearings won't move this forward any faster than hearings in other committees

And they would actually be very limiting because, among other things, the Judiciary Committee doesn't have the scope or resources to do the full-blown investigations that several other committees are already poised to do (and have already started).

Let the committees to the investigations that you're calling on the Judiciary Committee to do. It will go faster and be much broader and more comprehensive than anything that can be done at this stage in an impeachment inquiry.

[JHB]

6. Republicans learned this tactic long ago. Prepare the ground...

...by arranging for a drumbeat people hear day after day after day, pushed at every opportunity.

Don't think of just the Wikileaks releases and BenghaziBenghaziBenghaziButHerEmails, think of every so-called Clinton scandal back to 92: how many were made up from whole cloth or puffed up from horseshit? Just about all of them. It was a deliberate strategy to always have headlines accusing Democrats in general and the Clintons in particular of doing something criminal or treasonous. Same principle behind FOX always "accidentally" putting a D in front of the name of a Republican being indicted for something.

As much it may grate to think about it in these terms, this is a marketing campaign.

One important point, though: the story needs to be pushed, not just "put out there", and media people who try to play it as a "both sides" thing have to be verbally slapped back on camera **coughChuckToddcough**.

[standingtall]

7. Congress needs to use the I word Impeachment

maybe call them impeachment inquiry investigations. By shying away from talking about impeachment out of fear of sounding political and some point that starts to look political itself. I think most voters who aren't hardcore Trump supporters will believe it is justifiable for congress to consider impeaching Trump even if they don't support it and with the constitution there is no debate a measure of political justice via impeachment is given to the house of representatives to exercise at times like these.

[uponit7771]

9. K&R, if this is the case then so be it... just don't want this to be used as an excuse to do nothing

[Control-Z]

11. I think you're confusing the Pelosi House

with Paul Ryan's and John Boehner's.

I have never known Pelosi or House Democrats to look for ways to do nothing. That's not in our playbook, as far as I know.

[uponit7771]

12. Pelosi has said no impeachment before when it came to Bush 2. There's reason why people want ... ..

...action now

[beachbum bob]

10. pelosi is the smartest politician in DC, she knows how to work this to inflict MAX pain on GOP

nothing trump can say or do to stop what is coming

[Control-Z]

13. I believe this to be true.

I especially like the part where you wrote, "nothing trump can say or do to stop what is coming".

[brooklynite]

14. No, it's not

If you're going to play this for politics, you do it now IF you can get the votes to convict. To play this out during the election means 1) Republicans are revved up to vote and 2) the media oxygen that could be spent on campaign messages gets lost in the Impeachment circus.

[NewJeffCT]

15. They need to start them soon

everybody that is called to testify is going to have the White House try to block them from testifying, and resolving that through the increasingly right wing courts is going to take time. First, they block the subpoena to testify, then they claim executive privilege, and each of those needs to be in the courts. That's not happening overnight - most likely, it would take months.

The same thing with Trump's tax returns and financial records. Little Donny is going to be suing not just Cummings, but Pelosi, Hoyer, Schiff, Neal, the DNC, the DCCC, the DSCC, Chuck Schumer, CNN, MSNBC, etc

[NotHardly]

16. I call BS

[lunatica]

17. It's quite possible that impeachment hearing will have numerous spinoff hearings

Congress can’t ignore evidence of illegal activity which isn’t directly connected to the original intent of the hearings. They would have to investigate if other findings comes out of their hearings.

[George II]

18. That can be done more effectively through other hearings. Impeachment hearings are conducted...

....by the Judiciary Committee. But the Oversight and Intelligence Committees can hold hearings, too - they're not impeachment hearings. If an impeachment hearing begins, it will throttle the other two committees' hearings.

[lagomorph777]

19. There's plenty of criminal material to investigate for YEARS. We can start right away.

We can keep the pressure on until Nov 2020.

It's not just Mueller: it's Deutsche Bank, Alfa Bank, kidnapping babies, theft of billions by Cruella Devos and her anti-education cronies, criminals heading every single Cabinet department, national security endangered by wrongly-issued security clearnaces, and on and on and on....

[gsbbrockton]

20. Excellent Point

I like it Timing is everything

[johnnyfins]

21. Start now, keep the info coming

Humpty Trumpty will not be able to stop himself from "defending himself" on Twitter and elswhere. It will derive him nuts.

Public, televised, hearings.

[Recursion]

23. The "preliminary stuff" is plenty juicy too

But that's fine coming from the uncoordinated committee investigations now. A few months of that is what gives Judiciary the factual sea from which to predicate impeachment articles later this year/early next year.

[Kind of Blue]

22. Yes!