I can only take so much

There’s no doubt Trump can properly be charged with demanding a bribe from Ukraine’s president — gimme dirt on Biden if you want arms to fight Putin’s aggression — and that the Constitution says anyone convicted of bribery “shall be removed from office.”https://t.co/AGOZqoUft5

— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) November 14, 2019

However, this morning on NPR Jonathan Turley assured me bribery was not a proper charge:

TURLEY: I'm afraid history does not support Chairman Schiff on his suggestion of a bribery article of impeachment. His position is that bribery was defined differently during the colonial times and had this much broader meaning. On the face of it, I thought that was a little bit humorous because, you know, Chairman Schiff seems to support a living Constitution, so suddenly, he sounds like an originalist. But the problem is that it was not the case - that bribery was defined differently, but it was not as broadly defined as Chairman Schiff suggests.

Indeed, there were exchanges during the Constitutional Convention, particularly between Mason and Madison, where there was an objection that treason and bribery were too narrow. And there was a suggestion - or a proposal to include the term maladministration, a much broader term for impeachment. That was rejected. But it was spurred - that suggestion came about because they felt bribery was too narrow.

I think if they use a bribery article of impeachment, it will undermine them dramatically from a constitutional standpoint. You will follow tragedy with farce, in my view.

Of course he also said so long as the victim doesn't know about the crime, there's no harm/no foul:

The Republicans also scored some points, I believe. You know, the Republicans noted that and established a timeline of their own. And the most important, in my view, was that it's clear that the Ukraine did not know about the hold on the aid until around August 29, when a political article ran. And Taylor pretty much confirmed that by saying that as soon as that article ran talking about the hold, he got a virtually immediate call from the Ukraine.

Now, the aid was released only about 10 or 11 days after that. So the question for a lot of people is going to be, how significant, really, is that? They didn't really know about the quid pro quo, if there was one. And more importantly, the aid got to them. And so the argument is sort of like - you know, in Watergate, they made it into the office. You know, they actually did a criminal act.

(Ed. note:  the break-in at the Watergate office complex was the tip of the iceberg of Nixon's crimes, not the sole criminal count against him.  It was the "smoking gun" tape that finally brought Nixon down; his consideration of using the FBI to investigate his political enemies, not the bumbling burglars.  And was that tape evidence of an actual crime?  Or of the President's abuse of power?)

Although the criminal act is clear in the phone call where Trump asks for a "favor" before releasing the military funds; and Zelensky was about to announce the investigation of Biden, as demanded, when the State Dept. decided Trump was acting illegally and when the whistleblower story broke and Congress started to investigate, so Turley doesn't even have the basic facts right.  And as my Torts professor said:  "Change the facts, change the outcome."  Facts are the bedrock of sound legal analysis.

And I must confess I can't begin to understand the basis for Turley's analysis of "Bribery" in Art. II, section 4 of the Constitution, because he doesn't really make an argument there.  Because the argument from the record of the Constitutional convention is, like any argument from the legislative record of a statute, informative but not dispositive.  That's basic statutory interpretation, and frankly, no court is going to review an impeachment under Art. II and judge its soundness under that court's interpretation of the Constitution.  To do so would destroy the doctrine of separation of powers.  Besides, the Senate trial will be a political act, as Sen. Graham made clear today.  NPR (!) just played Graham saying he would not support articles of impeachment that rest on hearsay upon hearsay (the old tune from yesterday, already out of harmony with reality) and that he wouldn't vote for articles of impeachment without Trump having a chance to meet his accusers and question them, meaning the whistleblower (again, we are so far beyond the whistleblower's report even former JAG Graham knows his/her testimony would be irrelevant in any criminal or even civil trial).  Graham is, in other words, discarding the niceties of the law for a rhetorical fig leaf of "Don't confuse me with the fact, my mind is made up!"  Which, of course, would get him bounced from any petit jury peremptorily.    Sen. Graham is not, to say the least, considering the matter seriously "from a constitutional standpoint," unless he wants to go whole hog Rand Paul and drag the 6th Amendment into it.  Why, then, Professor Turley thinks he can, or needs, to make a legal argument based on a quasi-statutory analysis of the Constitution, is simply beyond me.

Mostly, I think he just can't help embarrassing himself.  He got used to being on camera with Keith Olbermann and I think now he's just in love with the sound of his own voice on a microphone, any microphone.  Such is the siren song of media fame.