In the House’s fast-moving impeachment inquiry, the House Intelligence Committee will be passing the baton to the House Judiciary Committee this week.

Everything we’re discussing about President Trump’s pressure campaign against Ukraine and President Vladimir Zelensky is framed as events in the past, ones that ended in early September when President Trump released held-up military aid to the country. That is wrong.

Happy Monday, December 2. White House counsel Pat Cipollone officially notified the House Judiciary Committee on Sunday that it has no plan to participate in the House’s impeachment inquiry, citing poor planning on behalf of Democrats and an unfair process. Here’s more on that and other stories we’re following:

TPM Reader JEB follows up with some thoughts on Trumpism, strongman rule and extreme wealth …

As it’s a slow Thanksgiving weekend Friday I re-read your “Brittle Grip” series of posts. You spoke today about the global rise of extreme wealth and strongman rule, though you had previously written mostly about the United States only. This prompts a few thoughts.

The first is the most obvious. Strongman rule has been around for a long time. In one form or another it long characterized the government of nations in several regions of the world. Most of those nations were not especially wealthy; your typical local strongman held political power but not a great deal of economic power, certainly not compared to the United States or the European countries. This has changed somewhat in recent years, more in some countries than in others.

TPM Reader DK has a good point. Leaving these to one-off decisions by the Chief Justice as presiding officer has the additional possible advantage of avoiding some damaging precedents …

I have read your discussion of a Senate impeachment trial with John Roberts in the role of presiding officer. The take away being that the Democrats don’t need to wait for a Supreme Court decision to subpoena witnesses (Mulvaney, et.al.) with direct knowledge of White House actions. Instead a witness could be called during a Senate trial, and if Roberts were to overrule objections, they would have to testify.

An utterly remarkable story this morning in the Post. Reporters got hold of a series of retainer contracts that were being negotiated early this calendar year. It’s not clear whether they were finalized or money changed hands. But they involved Rudy Giuliani agreeing to represent the former top prosecutor in Ukraine, Yuri Lutsenko, both as an individual and in his role as top prosecutor for combined sums of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Just so we’re clear, this is the guy who he was working with to manufacture damaging information about the Biden family.