(snip) [Trump ... dictated much of a defiant letter sent by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone to House leaders earlier this month], Cipollone’s main argument: The House impeachment inquiry was not legally “authorized” by a House vote, and so the administration was not required to participate.

“Your inquiry is constitutionally invalid and a violation of due process,” he wrote in his Oct. 8 letter to House leaders. “For the foregoing reasons, the President cannot allow your constitutionally illegitimate proceedings to distract him and those in the Executive Branch from their work on behalf of the American people.”

However, the House can make its own rules and can conduct investigations under its own terms, legal experts said. On Friday, Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell of Washington dismissed arguments by Republicans that the House must first vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry, calling the notion politically “appealing” but legally “fatally flawed.”

“No governing law requires this test — not the Constitution, not House Rules, and not [the grand jury secrecy rule], and so imposing this test would be an impermissible intrusion on the House’s constitutional authority,” Howell wrote.