Jonathan Turley tells lawmakers if they impeach Trump, “It’s your abuse of power”


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Dec. 4, 2019. Constitutional scholar and George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley appeared before the House Judiciary Committee during the Trump impeachment hearing and stated that it would be an abuse of their power to impeach President Trump. He started with “I’m not a supporter of President Trump. I voted against him.” “I’m concerned about lowering impeachment standards to fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of anger. I believe this impeachment not only fails to satisfy the standard of past impeachments, but would create a dangerous precedent for future impeachments.”

He additionally stated, “The closest of these three cases is to the 1868 impeachment of Andrew Johnson. It is not a model or an association that this committee should relish. In that case, a group of opponents of the president’s called the Radical Republicans created a trapdoor crime in order to impeach the president. They even defined it as a high misdemeanor. There was another shared aspect, besides the atmosphere of that impeachment and also the unconventional style of the two presidents, and that shared element is speed. This impeachment would rival the Johnson impeachment as the shortest in history, depending on how one counts the relevant days. Now, there are three commonalities when you look at these past cases. All involved established crimes. This would be the first impeachment in history where there would be considerable debate, and in my view, not compelling evidence of the commission of a crime.”
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“I get it, you’re mad. 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’s a golden doodle and they don’t get mad. So we’re all mad. Where has that taken us? Will a slipshod impeachment make us less mad? Will it only invite an invitation for the madness to follow every future administration? That is why this is wrong. It’s not wrong because President Trump is right. His call was anything but perfect. It’s not wrong because the House has no legitimate reason to investigate the Ukrainian controversy. It’s not wrong because we’re in an election year. There is no good time for an impeachment. No, it’s wrong because this is not how you impeach an American president.”

His final remark: “Before we cut down the trees so carefully planted by the framers, I hope you will consider what you will do when the wind blows again, perhaps for a Democratic president.”
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