Academia, Constitutional Law, Media, Politics

Turley To Speak At The University Of Michigan On Impeachment

Today I have the pleasure of speaking at the University of Michigan as part of a Constitution Day event.  I will be joined by Professor Michael Gerhardt (UNC School of Law) in discussing the history of presidential impeachments from Johnson to Trump. Both Professor Gerhardt and I testified at both the Clinton and Trump impeachment. I also served as lead defense counsel in the last judicial impeachment of Judge Thomas Porteous. The event was switched to a virtual format and will be held from 4:10 to 5:30 pm ET today. You can join via Zoom at https://umich.zoom.us/j/97622039094

If you are interested in reading material:

Read Professor Gerhardt’s written testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on “Constitutional Processes for Addressing Presidential Misconduct” at: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU00/20190712/109768/HHRG-116-JU00-Wstate-GerhardtM-20190712.pdf

Read Professor Turley’s written testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on “The Impeachment Inquiry Into President Donald J. Trump: The Constitutional Basis For Presidential Impeachment” at:
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/6547-jonathan-turley-s-opening-stat/739d3374f20a9ed69157/optimized/full.pdf

28 thoughts on “Turley To Speak At The University Of Michigan On Impeachment”

  1. Article II, Section 4, The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

    I’m an educated man, but not a lawyer. I’ve read articles and opinions on impeachment of the President. Learned scholars cannot agree on the “constitutional standards” for impeachment.

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to remember that you, Prof Turley, do not hold to the opinion that a crime needs to be committed for impeachment to occur.

    The “constitutional standard” in Article II, Section 4, involves; “Treason”, “Bribery”, “high Crimes”, “Misdemeanors”. These terms seem to imply that a behavior or act has occurred that is “against the law”.

    A “plain” (i.e. layman’s) reading of the constitutional standard above would seem to indicate that a “known and established rule, law or statute” has been broken by a President, Vice President, or civil Officer of the United States. In other words, a behavior or act has taken place that can be shown by evidence to violate a “known and established rule, law or statute”. Then and only then has the constitutional standard for impeachment been met.

    Is there some other “constitutional standard” for impeachment that must be met? Is there another place in the Constitution that contains standards for impeachment?

    A statement I have heard over and over bears repeating here; “speculation is NOT evidence”.

    The favor of a reply would be appreciated.

    Tom Hutchcraft

  2. If only the Reps can impeach the Pres while the Senate supposedly handles the trial who impeaches the Representatives?

    1. Own race bias is pretty simple. We evolved in an environment where other races were more likely to kill you than those of your own race. Same reason we avoid snakes and spiders but not so strongly embedded.

      1. Claiming a primal instinct – and that is an arguable point – of the very young and ignorant as a virtue is happily receding across the globe.

        1. I wonder if the CCP considers it a merely primal instinct or one that is receding. I hear they are locking up millions of Caucasoid Uighurs from Xinjiang, PRC.
          Millions of people is a big number.

          I suppose they have their reasons, dubious or not. I am not so sure with such a big phenomenon transpiring we could agree that it is “receeding”

          2. Uighurs are Muslim and hostile so race is not the only reason for the camps that the Chinese call vocational education centers.

            1. “They are not very interested in “diversity” nor “tolerance” over there.”
              ***

              I know what you meant but Book might not.

              They are interested in diversity and tolerance. They bring the whole power of a totalitarian state to crush it.

          2. Young, your constant search for justification of your overt racism – expressed numerous times here on less polite discussions – is not invisible. Just so you know,.

            Kurtz admits his ignorant prejudices, though both of you are just rear guard old white guys clinging to old ways in a world mixing before your eyes.

            1. lol, my prejudices are well informed!

              I am part of the vanguard of the future. just as nothing stays the same, and change is the one constant factor, there is also what Nietzsche called “eternal recurrence”

              or if you want a Biblical phrasing, all that was, will be again, & “there is nothing new under the sun” –Ecclesiastes

            2. Book– You run around calling everyone racist but you are the one who claimed blacks are born with inherent disadvantages but can jump high. You also declined to say whether you hired any in your business.

              Seems to me you are a racist hiding behind a shield of yelling ‘racist’ at everyone else.

              As for discussions of race, I somehow doubt that you are smart enough to contribute more than a few epithets, and that is very visible.

    2. I freely admit I prefer my own. Though I have a lot of love for the Chinese too.

      The topic of “racist AI” routines which have emerged has seen some attention over the past years. I suspect that it won’t go away. The way I understand it, programmers will have to put in over-ride routines based on the racial patterns recognized by AIs, to prevent it. And the very nature of those over-ride routines actually verifies the validity of the underlying patterns.

      Take a look at a picture of a crowd and at a certain resolution, race is obvious. at least where black and white come in. you get a big overlap among Asian and American indigenous groups, and mestizos, but as we know from genetics, there is an ancestral relation there as well. I suppose with sufficient resolution and a big dataset, an AI could sort that one out pretty accurately.

      Come to think of it, this reminds me of dogs. I have heard from some black people that some dogs don’t like black people. At the time the breed of dog was rottweiler. I have heard this from white folks too. I suspected one dog I had for a time, could see it too. I thought maybe this was my own biases rubbing off on the pet, at the time. But I had little doubt he perceived racial difference. However it came about, right or wrong, the point is, they see a recognizable pattern there of some kind which their little dog brains can register.

      And speaking of datasets and AI pattern recognition. AI now has a massive dataset to draw on that it did not before– facial images obscured by masks. I suspect the face recogntion AI agents have developed the ability to judge race and sex from the eye area alone, by now.

      2. Kurtz– “I suspect the face recogntion AI agents have developed the ability to judge race and sex from the eye area alone, by now.”

        So perhaps race is not a social construct rather biological in the eye of an intelligent computer.

        1. of course we know it is based in large part on heritable morphological characteristics like bone structures and skin color and so forth.

          of course it also has social components, none the least of which is how people approach the liminal areas of racial differences, and also how race functions in social interactions informally, in casual interactions, or more formally in such things as marriage customs, or in law.

          and then there is the overlap with other social dimensions which are not heritable, such as religion, or national affiliation, though these often track ancestrally.

          I recall that one “racial advocate” jared taylor said on Donahue, that Jews were white. This is obviously true, excepting Falashas perhaps, but he caught a lot of hell over it from the racist crowd. So there are these areas of overlap with religion, or say, national ancestry. Now let’s compare European ancestry, to Asiatic locations. Some middle eastern people have an Asiatic look and some look no different than Europeans. Think of all the Kurds, Afghanistan people, etc who are obviously white. Consider the word Caucasian– comes from the mountain range in Asia.

          The greatest fighter in the world pound for pound, Russian– Dagestani Khabib Nurmagomedov is white. And he is literally a Caucasian.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khabib_Nurmagomedov#/media/File:%D0%A5%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%B8%D0%B1_%D0%9D%D1%83%D1%80%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%B3%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%B2-2._12.9.2019_(cropped).jpg

          The US Census classifies Arabs generally as whites. So, depending on context, the social component may be more or less a factor in the conversation.

          Unfortunately, it’s had to have a civil conversation on the topic, as we have seen.

          1. There was a thing awhile back that the ancient Egyptians were black and whites stole civilization from them. Genetic tests revealed that the ancient Egyptians were white, similar to Jews and Lebanese, and were more white than modern Egyptians who, very likely, were mixing it up with their slaves.

  6. So it’s not bad enough that Turley embarrassed himself in front of the nation with his “well it didn’t raise to the level” BS, of course two adults in a consensual affair was impeachable and rose to that level. So he takes his shill for Trump and Barr on the road, the good people of Ann Arbor, U of M will see Turley for what he has become, a man who is doing his best to rewrite his own history.

  7. Just try to come up with a consensus as to the use and purpose of impeachment. This last year was egregious and we still have not set protections against political and partisan impeachment’s. As was said after this Impeachment is that it just takes an opposing party to take control and find anything and allege it to be an impeachable offense. As the winds blow this country could be taken through this over and over again. It would take vital time away from serious issues that might need to be focused on. COVID19 followed this last fiasco. We could be the n the middle of an Impeachment when dire things are neglected. Thus, Bill Clinton’s fling and the lead up to 9/11. (I am a 9/11 family member, thus my example)

  8. Dear Prof Turley – I hope while you are there you will make a statement against the GSI who are striking and greatly harming the already decayed academics. They started their complaint and their illegal strike on false and fake pretenses saying they were afraid of Covid – which is absurd bc all classes are virtual and the risk to persons less than 56 is almost nil.

    Then they stated their real goals which entirely match BLM’s political goals of destroying the US capitalism and democracy, cutting off the free speech rights of anyone except themselves, getting rid of police, discriminating against anyone who is not Black and providing racial preferences to anyone who is Black, and demanding the US citizens pay them for reparations (though most of us are ancestors of people who were in Europe in 1865 so it’s of course insane).

    They are on the verge of violence that we have seen in other cities. They are a destructive force and with their orthodoxies should be prohibited from teaching at any university.

  10. I of Mich. Much like Trish. Went in dumb. Come out dumb too. Hustling round Detroit in their alligator shoes.

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