How much legal weight does the GAO opinion carry?

[majdrfrtim]

IANAL! If GAO says the WH “broke the law” in withholding Ukrainian aid $$, would this effectively prevent a claim of “executive privilege” with regard to attempts to block testimony of witnesses with knowledge of and/or participation in that criminal activity?

[leftieNanner]

1. It doesn't matter

Trump will block everything. He hasn't been held accountable for anything so far. He will just go to the courts to at least slow everything down.

[jberryhill]

2. Where you are being misled....

...is by people breathlessly conflating the concepts of "a law has been violated" and "a criminal act has occurred".

Infringing a patent, for example, is a violation of law. It's not as if it is a crime.

When an official fails to perform according to a procedural law like this one, then what you are looking at is a failure to perform their duty which can have consequences such as a court order directing them to do it. Then, if they don't, they could be looking at contempt. Think of, for example, the clerk in Kentucky who didn't want to issue marriage licenses. She was briefly held for contempt for not performing her duty when ordered to do so, but that was not a criminal matter.

[majdrfrtim]

4. Thank you for the clarification!

I knew DU would come through.

[DeminPennswoods]

3. The biggest thing about this finding is that it

puts a pretty big dent in the GOP impeachment argument that Trump "didn't break any laws".