JUST GETTING WARMED UP:

Lawyers for the House Judiciary Committee floated the possibility that the panel could take up additional articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, according to a document filed in a federal appeals court Monday.

Urging the court to compel former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify, the committee's lawyers said that his testimony could lead to more revelations about the president's behavior.

"If McGahn's testimony produces new evidence supporting the conclusion that President Trump committed impeachable offenses that are not covered by the articles approved by the House, the committee will proceed accordingly -- including, if necessary, by considering whether to recommend new articles of impeachment," the lawyers said.

When President Donald Trump ordered a halt to aid to Ukraine last summer, defense officials and diplomats worried first that it would undermine U.S. national security. Ukraine is, as some of them later testified before Congress, on the front lines of Russian aggression, and only robust American support would fend off aggressive Moscow meddling in the West. This worry eventually helped galvanize congressional support for one of the two impeachment articles approved by the House of Representatives on Dec. 18.

But there was also a separate, less-noticed facet of the internal administration uproar set off by Trump's July 12 order stopping the flow of $391 million in weapons and security assistance to Ukraine. Some senior administration officials worried that by defying a law ordering that the funds be spent within a defined period, Trump was asking the officials involved to take an action that was not merely unwise but flatly illegal.

Tweet   @brothersjudd