The Chairman of a committee is responsible for running meetings, keeping the discussion on the appropriate topic, recognizing members to speak and confirming what the committee has decided (through voting or unanimous consent). Committees use Robert’s Rules of Order Newly Revised to guide their operations. However, they can also follow more informal procedures depending on the size of the committee and how crucial the subject matter is.
The Select Committee on Intelligence’s report on the 2016 election has landed and it is not good for President Trump. The committee has referred the president to the Justice Department on multiple grounds, including obstruction of justice and seditious conspiracy.
On this week’s episode of Committee News, moderator Yamiche Alcindor is joined by Ryan Reilly, Seung Min Kim and Mario Parker from NBC News to discuss the report, the committee’s reasons for referrals, and what it means for the Trump administration moving forward.
In its 845-page report, the committee details how President Trump and his campaign team worked to enlist state and county officials in a plan to overturn the result of the Electoral College vote. The committee alleges that Trump pushed his supporters to ramp up pressure on state legislators to designate an alternate slate of electors and claimed that voter fraud was occurring. The investigation found that Trump knew his allegations were false, but continued to amplify them.
The committee’s report says that a senior adviser to the presidential campaign, Kenneth Chesebro, is responsible for writing the legal memoranda that were used to justify the scheme. One of those memoranda, authored by an outside legal adviser to the campaign, described step-by-step how a private citizen could theoretically overturn the results of the 2020 election. The memo also referenced other legal cases that were used to support the fake electors scheme.
A Republican aide to the White House has also pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about how a member of Congress was briefed on classified information. The aide, Rick Gates, admitted that he lied to the Mueller investigation when he denied he told then-White House counsel Don McGahn about a conversation with Vice President Mike Pence about classified material in August.
E&E News spoke to more than a dozen lawmakers, congressional aides and lobbyists about who they expect to be the chairmen of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and what impact their leadership will have on environmental legislative business in the 119th Congress. Most believe that Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, who has a long track record on climate and energy issues, will be the favorite to become chairman if Democrats retain control of the chamber. The panel’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, is also a likely choice. He has long backed the climate movement and worked to pass a landmark bipartisan bill in the last Congress on border security. The panel is widely expected to take up a host of other environmental bills this year, including several bills from the House of Representatives.