To hear House Republicans tell it, Democratic leaders are holding a secret and partisan impeachment inquiry that excludes GOP lawmakers from the process. They know that’s ridiculous: as USA Today noted yesterday, 47 Republican members on the relevant committees leading the investigation “have access to the closed-door depositions.”
In fact, many of the members who barged into a secure congressional hearing room this week, disrupting the process as a press stunt, were fully permitted to be there. They didn’t need to storm the gates; they already had an invitation. It was a pointless made-for-the-cameras circus.
But on the show last night, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, raised a related point I hadn’t heard before.
MALONEY: It’s not enough that [dozens of House Republicans on the relevant committees] have every right to be there for every deposition, that their lawyers get equal time, that their members get equal time. And, of course, the funny part is, is very few of them have taken advantage of that because apparently they don’t want to do the actual work.
MADDOW: Republican members haven’t been sitting in on the depositions even when they’re allowed to?









