There are Republican members in the House committees, right?

[question everything]

Where witnesses appear behind closed door. So the Rs protesting about "transparency" does not hold water, right?

[snowybirdie]

1. Right

The other day Devin Nunes tried to bring in the Steele Report to a witness.

[Wellstone ruled]

2. Are they not govened by rules

similar to Grand Jury Rules? Understand if info is released without consent of the Committee,that person is subject to possible expulsion from Congress in the worse case.

[wasupaloopa]

3. They want public hearings so they can spew their

propaganda and discredit witnesses on TV.

[unblock]

4. correct, it's yet another baseless talking point fabricated by the right-wing and parroted back

faithfully by the media.

for some reason, demonstrably false claims by republicans are consistently deemed newsworthy, and given plenty of airtime, with little attention paid to the "demonstrably false" part.

[ooky]

5. All they've got is their theatrics and don't like losing that behind the closed doors.

Boohoo.

[yellowcanine]

6. Yes and they get equal time for asking questions and the witness stays until everyone is done

asking questions.

[BKDem]

7. I love how Rs like to mention "secret meetings held in the basement of the Capitol"

Like it's something sinister. The basement is where the secure meeting rooms are.

Meanwhile, the truly sinister meetings are being held in the Oval Office.

[Zambero]

10. They conducted a closed-door secret meeting!

And just to prove it, I was there and participated!

[machoneman]

8. Baseless is right. They cannot at this time reveal what they have seen or heard.

Only when the committee is finished and, I believe, issues a report can all House republiscums see the details. They will immediately challenge the report as we control it, not them. In fact, committee republiscums may refuse to sign off on the conclusions (no need for all to agree btw) and instead write a minority report that, one can guess, will be 180 degrees from the facts!

[gratuitous]

9. Correct

Also, the preliminary inquiry into executive wrongdoing is supposed to be handled by the Department of Justice when it receives a referral from the House. However, Attorney General Barr has chosen to act as the President's personal attorney rather than as an independent part of the government. Barr has declined to investigate any wrongdoing by the President, and has actively sought to block the inquiry, discourage witnesses, and obstruct justice. So the House has taken upon itself the task of conducing the impeachment inquiry.

And that's where we are right now: the inquiry stage. There have been no charges, no findings, no anything actionable against any identifiable person. Schiff's committee is gathering information and taking testimony in closed sessions from parties who may have information. The sessions are closed for at least two reasons: First, because classified information may be involved in the testimony of witnesses, and the committee has to safeguard that information; and second, because the inquiry may not result in any charges or articles of impeachment.

If the inquiry leads to charges, then the committee will conduct formal, public hearings and gather evidence of wrongdoing. In more prosaic terms, just because the police are looking into a situation, it doesn't mean they're going to arrest anyone.

[question everything]

12. Interesting. As opposed to the DOJ of the Nixon and the Clinton administrations

But try explaining this to his "base."

[gibraltar72]

11. They want to get it out as soon as possible

so they can innoculate the herd. If it were public now they could start normalizing it.