Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley blasts Democrats over their “dangerous, woefully inadequate” rush to impeach Trump
12/05/2019 / By JD Heyes
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler never wanted the opening of his impeachment inquiry into President Trump on Wednesday to be fair.
In fact, there is nothing that Nadler wants more than to run Trump out of office any way he can.
That helps explain why the three of four witnesses he and Democrats chose to appear before the panel are dyed-in-the-wool anti-Trump “law professors” who were never called to give unbiased testimony in the first place.
As reported by Breitbart News, Democrats called three law profs: Pam Karlan (Stanford), Michael Gerhardt (University of North Carolina), and Noah Feldman (Harvard).
Republicans, meanwhile, were ‘allowed’ to call one; they selected Jonathan Turley, a noted liberal Democrat who teaches at George Washington University.
Why would Republicans call him? Because he is fair. He has never made any bones about the fact that he doesn’t approve of President Trump’s policies or demeanor, and that he prefers liberal domestic and political policies.
But he is first and foremost a constitutional expert, and he was clear about the Democrat-led impeachment process thus far: It’s a sham.
“One can oppose President Trump’s policies or actions but still conclude that the current legal case for impeachment is not just woefully inadequate, but in some respects, dangerous, as the basis for the impeachment of an American president,” Turley said in his opening statement, USA Features News reported.
Turley also testified during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, and he represented Democrat-appointed federal Judge G. Thomas Porteous, Jr., who was impeached and removed from office in 2010 by the Senate — just the eighth time in U.S. history that has happened.
In his statement, Turley slammed House Democrats for the rush to impeach Trump on what he describes as flimsy evidence while warning them that they are setting a dangerous precedent for a partisan impeachment.
‘I am concerned about lowering impeachment standards’
“I am concerned about lowering impeachment standards to fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of anger,” he said. “If the House proceeds solely on the Ukrainian allegations, this impeachment would stand out among modern impeachments as the shortest proceeding, with the thinnest evidentiary record, and the narrowest grounds ever used to impeach a president.”
Turley also said he believes that the Dem-led impeachment stems from a hyper-partisan political environment that will not be calmed or repaired by a hasty impeachment, USA Features News noted.
“We are all mad and where has it taken us? Will a slipshod impeachment make us less mad or will it only give an invitation for the madness to follow in every future administration? That is why this is wrong…it’s wrong because this is not how you impeach an American president” he added. (Related: This is the government that the Democrats will usher in after a coup against Trump.)
Turley noted that Democrats’ claims that President Trump did something wrong — impeachable— in a phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky July 25 was “thin” at best.
“That does not bode well for future presidents who are working in a country often sharply and, at times, bitterly divided,” he added.
“I’m not a supporter of President Trump. I voted against him. My personal and political views of President Trump are irrelevant to my impeachment testimony, as they should be to your impeachment vote,” Turley said, Townhall noted further.
“As I have previously written, such misuses of impeachment would convert our process into a type of no-confidence vote of Parliament. Impeachment has become an impulse buy item in our raging political environment.”
And let’s not forget this impeachment — which is likely to happen — will set a new low bar for a process that was designed by our founders to be rare, extreme, and based on well-documented offenses, not political differences.
Because in the latter instance, that’ll mean Republicans are bound to impeach the next Democrat president…for something.
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Tagged Under: Congress, congressional testimony, constitutional expert, democrats, False Allegations, founders, House Judiciary Committee, impeachment, impeachment hearing, Jerrold Nadler, Jonathan Turley, law professor, President Trump, Ukraine
