This morning I will be testifying at the House Judiciary Committee in the opening hearing into the impeachment of President Donald J. Trump. My testimony is available below.
It has been roughly 20 years since I testified at the same hearing in the impeachment of President William J. Clinton and roughly 10 years since I was lead counsel at the last Senate impeachment trial (with my co-lead counsel Daniel Schwartz).
The hearing will be held at 10:00 am in 1100 Longworth House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515. It is open to the public.
I have the pleasure of appearing with three esteemed academics:
Noah Feldman, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law and Director, Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law at Harvard Law School
Pamela S. Karlan, Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law and Co-Director, Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford Law School
Michael Gerhardt, Burton Craige Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence at The University of North Carolina School of Law
Here is my testimony:
As a liberal Democrat, these hearings were not objective or fair. They were personal & subjective with many discrepancies. With that said, Trump should NOT be impeached. If we make legal decisions with our hearts vs clear evidence, we are doing an injustice.
Prof Turley is getting great reviews in most ever place I’ve read so far.
And after myself getting to listen to I think all of it, it seems pretty good.
I’d say Great but he didn’t do a Jesus & pull out a Bullwhip & drive the azzholes Commie Dims from their chamber.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/turley-inundated-threats-biden-and-pelosi-snap-same-day-whats-going-democrats
Not reading much are you?
What the Heck Happened to Jonathan Turley?
Twenty-five years ago, I sat in the front row of his law class. Now, he’s someone I hardly recognize.
by Julie Rodin Zebrak
What makes a man crawl back into the saddle for people like Barr and Trump? Why would Turley dust off failed arguments and put himself in the position of being a Trump defender when he claims he doesn’t agree with or support him? Is it his love of the Constitution? Is it his concern about the overreach of Congressional investigations? Marcus’s 1998 Post piece had an answer. Some of his law school colleagues, she reported, “sniff at his celebrity, saying he has forsaken scholarship for self-aggrandizement.” Indeed, according to Marcus, one faculty member quipped at the time: “If there were the deanship for self-promotion, he’d get it.”
I voted for Trump to fire people like Julie Zebrak.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/julie-zebrak-8498638
DSS – Julie seems to be self-employed.
Her LinkedIn account describes her as ” a seasoned political consultant, organizer and fundraiser.” IOW “a party hack”
🙂
She’s a Kamala hack which should tell you all you need to know about her judgment.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/12/05/what-the-heck-happened-to-jonathan-turley/
Thanks, mikefoxtrot.
Read it. What a smarmy beeeaatch!
mespo – washington monthly is progressive publication. She could not get published in The Hill.
Paul:
She’s lucky to be published anywhere with that trash. Recounting her law school days as a front row seater.?Typical grad school kiss ass. “Oh Professor Turley, you’re so wonderful!” We backrowers laughed at that obsequious rabble. Most were dumb as posts and dreaded being called to stand and deliver.
mespo – never trust anyone who sits in the front row on purpose.
Never did.
mespo – if I got to pick my own seat, I was always in the back row. That way you don’t have to worry about the people behind you.
Just ask aces n 8’s Wild Bill if you happened to see him decades later on the other side.
😉
Oky1 – I have been to Deadwood and have seen that coward Jack McCall shot Wild Bill in the back. It was horrifying.
On a sidenote, just before the shooting Jack and I were in the back of the saloon chatting about his costuming choices. 😉 He politely excused himself because, and I quote “I have some business to take care of.”
Paul,
The trouble with this internet stuff is it’s addictive nature, & I let it sucker me in & have trouble stepping away.
Less then 2 hours from here, North of Ok City, there is an authentic pre statehood Oklahoma saloon that last I heard is still in biz & serves great food.
Why haven’t I taken the wife & went there?
Internet maybe? lol
Woolaroc, about 30, 45 minutes away. Why haven’t I been back since I was a kid. It’s a really cool place.
Internet?
There are great places all over that a visit, like coffee with Paul in Arizona. 😉
I know I’d better keep getting up moving while still can.
https://www.woolaroc.org/
https://gilcrease.org/
Oky1 – well, this is the time of year to come to the Valley. If you get here we will have coffee. 🙂
I’m sure Richard Rich said the same thing about Sir Thomas More
Thank you for your thoughtful testimony. It was courageous to not let your feelings influence what you said. I admire people who are calm in the midst of turmoil.
This is for Mespo and Turley, and anyone else who has a passing interest in Saint Augustine.
The Catholic Calendar today remembers the life of Saint Ambrose, who among other things, instructed, formed, and baptized Saint Augustine. St Ambrose was originally a politician, a Roman governor in northern Italy. He received an authentic liberal education in the 4th Century. He became a skilled rhetorician and scholar of jurisprudence, held great sway over the people, during a time of great turmoil in and eventual downfall of the Roman Empire….hence this post.
Saint Ambrose pray for us
Memorial of Saint Ambrose
BENEDICT XVI
GENERAL AUDIENCE
Saint Peter’s Square
Wednesday, 24 October 2007
Ambrose was not old when he died. He had not even reached the age of 60, since he was born in about 340 A.D. in Treves, where his father was Prefect of the Gauls. His family was Christian.
Upon his father’s death while he was still a boy, his mother took him to Rome and educated him for a civil career, assuring him a sound instruction in rhetoric and jurisprudence. In about 370 he was sent to govern the Provinces of Emilia and Liguria, with headquarters in Milan. It was precisely there that the struggle between orthodox and Arians was raging and became particularly heated after the death of the Arian Bishop Auxentius. Ambrose intervened to pacify the members of the two opposing factions; his authority was such that although he was merely a catechumen, the people acclaimed him Bishop of Milan.
Until that moment, Ambrose had been the most senior magistrate of the Empire in northern Italy. Culturally well-educated but at the same time ignorant of the Scriptures, the new Bishop briskly began to study them. From the works of Origen, the indisputable master of the “Alexandrian School”, he learned to know and to comment on the Bible. Thus, Ambrose transferred to the Latin environment the meditation on the Scriptures which Origen had begun, introducing in the West the practice of lectio divina. The method of lectio served to guide all of Ambrose’s preaching and writings, which stemmed precisely from prayerful listening to the Word of God. The famous introduction of an Ambrosian catechesis shows clearly how the holy Bishop applied the Old Testament to Christian life: “Every day, when we were reading about the lives of the Patriarchs and the maxims of the Proverbs, we addressed morality”, the Bishop of Milan said to his catechumens and neophytes, “so that formed and instructed by them you may become accustomed to taking the path of the Fathers and to following the route of obedience to the divine precepts” (On the Mysteries 1, 1). In other words, the neophytes and catechumens, in accordance with the Bishop’s decision, after having learned the art of a well-ordered life, could henceforth consider themselves prepared for Christ’s great mysteries. Thus, Ambrose’s preaching – which constitutes the structural nucleus of his immense literary opus – starts with the reading of the Sacred Books (“the Patriarchs” or the historical Books and “Proverbs”, or in other words, the Wisdom Books) in order to live in conformity with divine Revelation.
It is obvious that the preacher’s personal testimony and the level of exemplarity of the Christian community condition the effectiveness of the preaching. In this perspective, a passage from St Augustine’s Confessions is relevant. He had come to Milan as a teacher of rhetoric; he was a sceptic and not Christian. He was seeking the Christian truth but was not capable of truly finding it.
What moved the heart of the young African rhetorician, sceptic and downhearted, and what impelled him to definitive conversion was not above all Ambrose’s splendid homilies (although he deeply appreciated them). It was rather the testimony of the Bishop and his Milanese Church that prayed and sang as one intact body. It was a Church that could resist the tyrannical ploys of the Emperor and his mother, who in early 386 again demanded a church building for the Arians’ celebrations. In the building that was to be requisitioned, Augustine relates, “the devout people watched, ready to die with their Bishop”. This testimony of the Confessions is precious because it points out that something was moving in Augustine, who continues: “We too, although spiritually tepid, shared in the excitement of the whole people” (Confessions 9, 7).
In the sixth book of the Confessions, Augustine tells of his meeting with Ambrose, an encounter that was indisputably of great importance in the history of the Church. He writes in his text that whenever he went to see the Bishop of Milan, he would regularly find him taken up with catervae of people full of problems for whose needs he did his utmost. There was always a long queue waiting to talk to Ambrose, seeking in him consolation and hope. When Ambrose was not with them, with the people (and this happened for the space of the briefest of moments), he was either restoring his body with the necessary food or nourishing his spirit with reading. Here Augustine marvels because Ambrose read the Scriptures with his mouth shut, only with his eyes (cf. Confessions, 6, 3). Indeed, in the early Christian centuries reading was conceived of strictly for proclamation, and reading aloud also facilitated the reader’s understanding. That Ambrose could scan the pages with his eyes alone suggested to the admiring Augustine a rare ability for reading and familiarity with the Scriptures. Well, in that “reading under one’s breath”, where the heart is committed to achieving knowledge of the Word of God – this is the “icon” to which we are referring -, one can glimpse the method of Ambrosian catechesis; it is Scripture itself, intimately assimilated, which suggests the content to proclaim that will lead to the conversion of hearts.
Like the Apostle John, Bishop Ambrose – who never tired of saying: “Omnia Christus est nobis! To us Christ is all!” – continues to be a genuine witness of the Lord. Let us thus conclude our Catechesis with his same words, full of love for Jesus: “Omnia Christus est nobis! If you have a wound to heal, he is the doctor; if you are parched by fever, he is the spring; if you are oppressed by injustice, he is justice; if you are in need of help, he is strength; if you fear death, he is life; if you desire Heaven, he is the way; if you are in the darkness, he is light…. Taste and see how good is the Lord: blessed is the man who hopes in him!” (De Virginitate, 16, 99). Let us also hope in Christ. We shall thus be blessed and shall live in peace.
http://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20071024.html
I am a fallen away Catholic and the words you shared have touched me. I am often in despair due to our country’s simmering civil war. It breaks my heart. I am guilty of taking my eyes off of God and fixing them on very flawed politicians. I did not know the history of St Augustine’s conversion due to St Ambrose who was a former politician. They found a better way and I should learn from them. I have much to learn. Thank you
Yes! Marie Vierge, priez pour nous. And I’m an agnostic, deeply saddened by the moral.vacuum in this country and those who place the economy above the Constitution.
How much money did the GOP pay you, puppet?
Rape Farmer – I would suppose that if Turley got paid, he was paid the same as the Democratic puppets.