The House Republican SCIF coup has been put down, and Laura Cooper’s impeachment testimony against Trump has begun

| 3:58 pm EDT October 23, 2019
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Earlier today, several House Republicans illegally entered a secure SCIF room with the intention of preventing Department of Defense official Laura Cooper from testifying for the House impeachment inquiry. That led to a standoff in which the Republicans involved appeared to commit felonies by tweeting from the SCIF, and then cartoonishly ordered themselves pizza. But now it’s over, and it was all for nothing.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Cooper has indeed begun testifying, according to multiple major news outlets. She got started several hours late, thanks to the House GOP attempted coup – but she’s testifying nonetheless. If these House GOP goons were hoping to intimidate her out of testifying, or force it to be delayed until a later date, they’ve failed.

Furthermore, these House Republicans have not only served to make themselves look terrible, they’ve managed to make Donald Trump look even more guilty in the eyes of the American public. Impeachment poll numbers continue to rise by the day, and after today’s media narrative ends up being about this idiotic pro-Trump stunt, it’ll cause even more Americans to side with impeachment.

That means today was a win for House Democrats on two fronts. First, they were smart enough to stay out of the way of the imploding House Republicans. That was important, because if they’d had the House Republicans arrested, the resulting media narrative would have been about Democratic House overreach, which would have helped Trump. Second, the House Democrats got their witness to testify at the end of it all. That’s a win-win for the Democrats.