"... a legal maneuver that carries significant political overtones..."

Ah, the subtle humor of the NYT.

I'm reading "Raising Prospect of Impeaching Trump, House Seeks Mueller’s Grand Jury Secrets/In a court filing, House Democrats said they need access to secret grand jury evidence because they are weighing whether to recommend impeaching President Trump":

The House Judiciary Committee on Friday asked a federal judge to unseal grand jury secrets related to Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation, using the court filing to declare that lawmakers have already in effect launched an impeachment investigation of President Trump.

In a legal maneuver that carries significant political overtones, the committee told a judge that it needs access to the grand jury evidence collected by Mr. Mueller as special counsel — such as witness testimony — because it is “investigating whether to recommend articles of impeachment” against the president.

“Because Department of Justice policies will not allow prosecution of a sitting president, the United States House of Representatives is the only institution of the federal government that can now hold President Trump accountable for these actions,” the filing told the judge, Beryl A. Howell, who supervised Mr. Mueller’s grand jury.

Referring to the part of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to impeach and remove a president, the filing continued: “To do so, the House must have access to all the relevant facts and consider whether to exercise all its full Article I powers, including a constitutional power of the utmost gravity — approval of articles of impeachment.”

With the filing, the committee’s chairman, Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, was attempting to sidestep the debate raging inside the Democratic Party over whether the full House should hold a vote to formally declare that it is opening an impeachment inquiry. By declaring that his committee was in effect conducting such an inquiry, he was heading off a politically difficult vote in the committee or the full house to pursue impeachment....

... in effect...

Democrats hope that Judge Howell will agree that their request for the grand jury material falls into the same legal category as a Nixon-era precedent under which the committee gained access to Watergate evidence. But there is a difference that could matter: In 1974, the full House had voted to declare an impeachment inquiry opened.... [And] the Watergate prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, and his grand jury obtained a judge’s permission to send the evidence they had gathered to the House Judiciary Committee, which was already formally conducting an impeachment inquiry into Nixon. [And] the Nixon Justice Department did not object to letting lawmakers see the materials.

In the current case, the committee is trying to get the material on its own. Attorney General William P. Barr has declined requests by Mr. Nadler to join the committee in petitioning the court....

One complication is that the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit recently issued a ruling with a narrow view of when courts may let outsiders see grand jury information. It limited the criteria to an explicit list of exceptions that does not say anything about sharing such material with Congress.

But in making the ruling, the appeals court judges addressed the fact that their predecessors had permitted the Nixon-era Judiciary Committee to see such material. The court decided that the Watergate-era step had been lawful because it could be interpreted as falling under an exception authorizing disclosure of grand jury material “in connection with a judicial proceeding.” The idea was that impeachment, which culminates with a trial in the Senate, is effectively a judicial proceeding.

For that reason, whether Judge Howell agrees that the Judiciary Committee is conducting an impeachment investigation could determine whether it gets the material.

I would expect Judge Howell to say that the full House needs to vote to open an impeachment inquiry before the question of fitting that exception arises and, on that basis, to avoid the constitutional question. It sounds as though the court of appeals in that case that narrowed access to grand jury information was trying to craft an exception that would explain the Watergate case, which already existed. Here, the committee is trying to enlarge the exception to include other things that are — as the Times puts it — "in effect" conducting an impeachment investigation.

It doesn't seem that judges that have been taking a narrow view of access to grand jury information would take an opportunity to construe the exception broadly, especially when the request comes from political actors who are declining to attempt to do what would bring them directly within the exception: vote to open a formal impeachment inquiry.

They're asking the judge to take over where they could act and have chosen not to. Courts should stay out of politics when they can, and this is an example of political actors using a court to do what they lack the political will to do for themselves.

Of course, everyone can see that they won't take a vote because they know they will lose.