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1 1 (December 15, 2023)

handle is hein.crs/govensl0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional ______ Research Service Impeachment Investigations, Part II: Access Updated December 15, 2023 On December 13, 2023, the House directed a trio of House committees to continue their ongoing investigations ... into whether sufficient grounds exist to impeach President Joe Biden. The inquiry, which is being led by the Committee on Oversight and Accountability in coordination with the Judiciary Committee and the Committee on Ways and Means, marks an early step in a constitutional process that could lead to the nation's third presidential impeachment in the last four years. It also may strengthen the House committees' authority to obtain information, as there is reason to believe that invocation of the impeachment power could improve the committees' legal claims of access to certain types of evidence relevant to the allegations of misconduct against President Biden. This Sidebar is the second in a two-part series addressing a pair of interrelated issues prompted by the new impeachment inquiry. Part I of the series explores whether, as a legal and constitutional matter, the House must explicitly authorize an impeachment investigation for House committees to obtain any possible information-access benefits. The House having provided authorization, this Sidebar considers what those benefits may be and outlines how transitioning to an impeachment investigation may bolster the House's ability to obtain relevant evidence, especially through courts. The Tools and Scope of Impeachment Investigations as Compared to Legislative Investigations Assessing whether invocation of the impeachment power improves the House's ability to obtain relevant information requires a brief comparison of impeachment investigations to legislative investigations. The two types of investigations have much in common: both represent exercises of the House's constitutional power; both can act as essential checks on executive overreach and help ensure preservation of the separation of powers; and both are unique and consequential powers characterized by their mix of judicial, legislative, and political features. In addition, whether engaged in an impeachment or legislative investigation, the tools used to gather information are now mostly the same. In any investigation, a committee would likely obtain information through informal requests, voluntary interviews, hearings, and subpoenas for documents, testimony, and depositions. These similarities sometimes make it difficult to distinguish between the two types of investigation, especially because (as discussed in Part I) committee investigations are sometimes undertaken for a mix of legislative and impeachment purposes. Nevertheless, there are differences. Perhaps the primary distinction between the two investigations is that of scope. The Supreme Court has stated that legislative Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB11083 CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress

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