COURTS/IMPEACHMENT/JUSTICE DEPARTMENT/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “A federal judge on Friday [10-25-19] gave a legal endorsement to the House Democrats’ impeachment probe into President Donald Trump and ordered the Justice Department to release grand jury information redacted from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. The ruling is a blow to the Trump administration’s claims that the House is not conducting a valid impeachment inquiry since there’s been no formal vote to authorize the probe. In a lengthy opinion, Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the US District Court in Washington, DC, said the House clearly is conducting an impeachment inquiry. The House Judiciary Committee had gone to court seeking information in the Mueller report that is redacted because it came from secret grand jury proceedings. The bar for releasing such information is high, but Howell said that ‘to avoid a possible injustice in the impeachment inquiry, that this need for disclosure is greater than the need for continued secrecy.’”
–Tammy Kupperman, Joan Biskupic, Ariane de Vogue and Manu Raju, “Judge says impeachment inquiry is legal and justifies disclosing grand jury material,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, October 25, 2019 5:13 pm