"You read it well" -- Turley isn't thrilled with Eisen's line of questioning about a WSJ op-ed he recently wrote saying the Ukraine scandal is worthy of investigation and impeachment doesn't require a crime pic.twitter.com/HIID1LyMYW— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 4, 2019
And Turley clearly came prepared. His opening statement numbered 53 pages — exponentially longer than the other witnesses’ — and contained extensive, detailed footnotes.
Oh, boy! Footnotes! To an opening statement! Read them all, please!
Perhaps his strongest argument came at the top, when he said that he has very little regard for Trump, even as he doesn’t believe Trump should be impeached.
Frankly, if that's Turley's strongest argument at the end of 53 pages complete with footnotes, he doesn't have much of an argument as a law professor, which is why he's there.
“First, I am not a supporter of President Trump. I voted against him in 2016 and I have previously voted for Presidents Clinton and Obama,” Turley said in his written statement. “Second, I have been highly critical of President Trump, his policies and his rhetoric, in dozens of columns. Third, I have repeatedly criticized his raising of the investigation of the Hunter Biden matter with the Ukrainian president.”
Turley even said, contra Trump, that Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky “was anything but perfect.”
Yes, yes, I understand the "optics," but again, this is all you have to say about what Turley had to say?
Turley’s advocacy for a president he doesn’t support was a noted contrast to the other three witnesses, all of whom, as the White House quickly noted, had publicly disparaged Trump in the past. Some suggested Democrats should have invited witnesses who didn’t appear so ideologically opposed to Trump.
I listened to the testimony of the three professors (Turley was not questioned while I was listening, before the 10 minute break at noon D.C. time which is taking place as I write). None of them rested their arguments on their animus for Trump, but on their concept of the Constitution and interpretation of Art. II, section 4. And frankly, it was interesting and well put and not at all tedious and legalistic.
Another tactical error by House Dems: Only calling liberal law professors to testify at HJC hearing on impeachment. It's as if they want this to be partisan affair.
I've addressed this before. Sure, Democrats should have had MORE lawyers discussing finer points of Constitutional law. Frankly, I can't think of what a conservative law professor would add to what I've heard already, except maybe to agree with it. And inside baseball under the stitches somewhere in the winding, people MIGHT know this professor speaking is a "conservative" and that speaker is a "liberal" (FoxNews viewers will consider all witnesses called by Democrats to be "liberals" by default, so....), but the rest of us won't know and won't care. I've never heard of these professors (I barely remember my own law professors) and I don't know their politics/legal leanings whatsoever. If I knew them really, really well (as I know Turley, at least), it MIGHT color my opinion of what they way, but simply what they say is good enough for me (largely because I agree with it). If a bunch of Federalist Society law professors were called as witnesses, and said the same things, would it make a difference to me, or to most of the audience among the many-headed?
Yeah, right.
Turley argued in his briefer verbal statement that impeachment was not a remedy for political anger — nor was it likely to reduce it.
“I get it: You’re mad,” Turley said. “The president’s mad. My Republican friends are mad. My Democratic friends are mad. My wife is mad. My kids are mad. Even my dog seems mad. And Luna is a goldendoodle, and they don’t get mad."
He added: “So we’re all mad. Where’s that 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?"
So Turley's legal argument is a reductio ad absurdum that we are all essentially "women" (emotional creatures, donchaknow?) who are reacting rather than thinking? That's the powerful argument that carries the day against the calm, reasoned, and frankly easily understood arguments of the other three professors? Against this you have three professors rationally discussing proper limits of presidential power, the concept of bribery as it was understood in the late 18th century (with easy to understand analogies), and the easily grasped idea that if you give a President an inch, he'll take a mile (i.e., allow Trump to do this, and what does the next POTUS do?). But the real problem with this process is that people are angry?
Yeah, right.
Besides, his argument is internally incoherent:
Besides, his argument is internally incoherent:
So *this* is what the REPUBLICANS’ legal expert witness has to say—that if @realDonaldTrump did what he’s been accused of doing, he could be impeached and removed from office. Got it. pic.twitter.com/KEZR3uui1s— George Conway (@gtconway3d) December 4, 2019
“So what they were thinking about was bribery as it was understood in the 18th century based on the common law up until that point,” she explained. “But what they were understanding then was the idea that when you took private benefits or when you asked for private benefits… in return for an official act, or someone gave them to you to influence an official act, that was bribery.”
Eisen then asked her to evaluate whether the president’s actions in pressuring the government of Ukraine to investigate his political rivals constituted bribery.
“If you conclude that he asked for the investigation of Vice President Biden and his son for political reasons — that is to aid his re-election, then, yes,” she said. “You have bribery here.”
Turley is arguing that definition doesn't apply due to a Supreme Court ruling on bribery. The problem is, the Court itself has held that impeachment is not a criminal proceeding subject to all the standards of review and procedure and Constitutional protection required of a criminal trial. You don't, in other words, need to establish the crimes (he's now saying the crimes were established against Nixon, except they weren't to the standards of a Supreme Court decision on the elements of bribery; again, his argument is internally incoherent. Nixon's crimes were no more "established" than Trump's, unless you accept crimes can be established absent the ruling of a court of competent jurisdiction which ruling is upheld by an appellate process.). Impeachment is not a criminal proceeding; that is its strength and its weakness. I know I've argued for criminal proceedings first, political second, as a political matter. But Congress is well within its authority to decide what constitutes grounds for impeachment; the corrective to their decision is not the courts, or the law professors, but the people.
That's kind of what government of, by and for the people, means.
(Listening to Turley further I realized he's creating, tacitly, a "King's X" that keeps Trump effectively above the law, because he well knows the DOJ will not prosecute a sitting President, which means the President can never be prosecuted for commission of a crime; and Congress is not an Art. III body that sits to determine criminal offenses under the review of the Supreme Court (which surely would be required to establish, finally and fully, that a "crime" had occurred under his legal analysis otherwise how can your argument appeal to a Supreme Court ruling as the final word?). So the result of his argument is that the POTUS always has a "Get out of jail free card," and can never actually be impeached.
That's some catch, that Catch-22. See how it works?
(Listening to Turley further I realized he's creating, tacitly, a "King's X" that keeps Trump effectively above the law, because he well knows the DOJ will not prosecute a sitting President, which means the President can never be prosecuted for commission of a crime; and Congress is not an Art. III body that sits to determine criminal offenses under the review of the Supreme Court (which surely would be required to establish, finally and fully, that a "crime" had occurred under his legal analysis otherwise how can your argument appeal to a Supreme Court ruling as the final word?). So the result of his argument is that the POTUS always has a "Get out of jail free card," and can never actually be impeached.
That's some catch, that Catch-22. See how it works?
The White House Chief of Staff said it was! https://t.co/qQ5QOOKk9l— Brian Tashman (@briantashman) December 4, 2019
Yeah, the POTUS is not above the law; the law just can't be applied to the POTUS.)*
*and, because I can never finish, Turley's argument is that Trump can't be impeached because no evidence of a quid pro quo has been presented. But whether or not evidence of a crime has been presented is, in the criminal justice system, for a trier of fact. Turley may, as a defense lawyer, argue the prosecutor doesn't have the evidence to prove the crime against his client. The jury is free to disagree, and it's the jury's opinion that matters. What Turley as the hypothetical defense lawyer cannot do, is derail the investigation and indictment of his client, on the grounds the prosecution has indicted without proving the crime. Impeachment is comparable to indictment, the Senate trial to a jury finding the facts as in a court of law. The burden to prove the elements of the crime is in the trial, not in the impeachment itself. Turley may think the statements of federal courts is controlling here, but that's a defense at trial, not an argument that prevents indictment; or impeachment.
(BTW, the GOP counsel is arguing the definitions of terms from Johnson's 1785 dictionary. Riveting TeeVee!)
*and, because I can never finish, Turley's argument is that Trump can't be impeached because no evidence of a quid pro quo has been presented. But whether or not evidence of a crime has been presented is, in the criminal justice system, for a trier of fact. Turley may, as a defense lawyer, argue the prosecutor doesn't have the evidence to prove the crime against his client. The jury is free to disagree, and it's the jury's opinion that matters. What Turley as the hypothetical defense lawyer cannot do, is derail the investigation and indictment of his client, on the grounds the prosecution has indicted without proving the crime. Impeachment is comparable to indictment, the Senate trial to a jury finding the facts as in a court of law. The burden to prove the elements of the crime is in the trial, not in the impeachment itself. Turley may think the statements of federal courts is controlling here, but that's a defense at trial, not an argument that prevents indictment; or impeachment.
(BTW, the GOP counsel is arguing the definitions of terms from Johnson's 1785 dictionary. Riveting TeeVee!)
I cannot emphasis enough that Turley is literally just making things up right now. Claiming that impeaching on obstruction without waiting for the courts to weigh in is abuse, that's literally just a thing he's saying with no precedent or constitutional grounding whatsoever.— Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) December 4, 2019
Well, there's that, too....
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