This afternoon, I will testify before the Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability. The hearing at 2:00 pm is entitled “Censorship Laundering: How the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Enables the Silencing of Dissent.” It will be held in 310 Cannon House Office Building.
Continue reading “Turley Testifies on Censorship in Homeland Security Hearing”
This afternoon I will testify at the first hearing of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Below is my written testimony.
The Twitter Files raise serious questions of whether the United States government is now a partner in what may be the largest censorship system in our history. The involvement cuts across the Executive Branch, with confirmed coordination with agencies ranging from the CDC to the CIA. Even based on our limited knowledge, the size of this censorship system is breathtaking, and we only know of a fraction of its operations through the Twitter Files. Twitter has 450 million active users but it is still only ranked 15th in the number of users, after companies such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and Pinterest. The assumption is that the government censorship program dovetailed with these other companies, which continue to refuse to share past communications or work with the government. Assuming that these efforts extended to these larger platforms, it is a government-supported censorship system that is unparalleled in history. Continue reading “Turley Testifies on Censorship Before House Select Subcommittee”
This morning I will be testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the expansion of domestic terrorism investigations. The hearing is titled “Examining the ‘Metastasizing’ Domestic Terrorism Threat After the Buffalo Attack” and will begin at 10 am in the Hart Senate Office Building (Room 216). The written testimony is linked below.
Continue reading “Turley Testifies in the Senate on Domestic Terrorism”
I will be testifying this morning in Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties of the House Judiciary Committee in a hearing on “Enhancing the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938.” The hearing will be held at 10 am at the Rayburn House Office Building (Room 2141). My testimony is below.
Continue reading “Turley Testifies on the Foreign Agents Registration Act”
Twenty years ago, I testified in Congress on the Presidential Records Act and the need for reforms to preserve these records for history. This morning I will testify again on this subject before the Senate Committee on Homeland and Governmental Affairs in a hearing entitled “Correcting the Public Record: Reforming Federal and Presidential Records Management.”
Continue reading “Turley to Testify before the Senate on Presidential Records”
Today I will be testifying in the House Judiciary Committee on the use of secret surveillance and gag orders in recent investigations into unauthorized disclosures of classified information. The oversight hearing is in conjunction with investigations of Congress and the Inspector General following reports that the Department of Justice’s engaged in surveillance of Members of Congress, journalists, the White House Counsel and others.
The hearing will be held in Room 2141 of the Rayburn House Office Building at 10 am. The hearing is titled “Secrecy Orders and Prosecuting Leaks: Potential Legislative Responses to Deter Prosecutorial Abuse of Power” and will stream live here. My testimony is below.
I testified yesterday on possible private and public limitations on free speech and the free press, including a letter from Democratic members pressing companies to remove Fox News and networks from cable. Democratic members sent the letter to AT&T, Verizon, Roku, Amazon, Apple, Comcast, Charter, DISH, Cox, Altice, Hulu and Google’s parent company, Alphabet. During the hearing, House Democrat Anna Eshoo (D., Cal.) insisted that she was only “asking questions” and then reframed the objections to the letter as whether the letter itself was a violation of the First Amendment. It seemed like the line from A Hologram for the King: “It all meant something. Until it didn’t.”
Given the limited opportunity to respond to Rep. Eshoo in the hearing, I wanted to respond. Continue reading ““It All Meant Something. Until It Didn’t”: A Response To Rep. Anna Eshoo”
I have the honor of testifying this afternoon before the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The hearing will address calls for public and private regulation of speech, including the recent letter from Democratic members asking why Fox News and other networks should be allowed on cable news. The hearing entitled “Fanning The Flames: Disinformation and Extremism In The Media” will be held at 12:30. My testimony is below.
Continue reading “Turley Testifies On Free Speech and The Free Press In House Hearing”
Today I am testifying in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution on the anti-free-speech movement in the United States. The hearing is entitled “The Right of the People Peaceably to Assemble: Protecting Speech by Stopping Anarchist Violence.” The hearing will be held at 2:30 in the Dirksen Senate Office Building and will be broadcast on C-Span and available on the Internet through the Committee. My testimony is below.
Today, I will be testifying before Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice on the legal and policy implications of biometric and facial recognition technology. I have a forthcoming law review article on privacy in the age of biometrics. Much of my testimony will focus on that research. The testimony is public and will be held at 2 pm (ET). This will be the final meeting of the Commission and, due to the pandemic, it will be handled telephonically rather than the planned culmination in Tampa, Florida.
This afternoon, I am testifying on the hearing on the controversy surrounding the clearing of Lafayette Park on June 1, 2020. I was called to appear to address the underlying legal and constitutional standards governing such mass demonstrations. For roughly 14 years, I was one of the lead counsels in the World Bank litigation that helped establish guidelines and case law governing such operations. I have been critical of the force used to clear the park as well as the attack on a team of Australian journalists covered the protests.
The operation to clear the Park began two days before with the plan to install fencing. By Monday, a small barrier was in place around the park itself and the clearing operation was to push back the crowd to a perimeter to allow the higher fencing to be installed beyond the range of debris or objects. The crowd was pushed back to I St. from H St. by the line of officers. (The hearing title and the testimony refers to the “Lafayette Park” or “Lafayette Square Park” generally. In fact, the immediate park was closed off and we are discussing the operation to clear the area for the installation of the higher fence).
As I state in the testimony, I believe the order to clear the area would be found lawful. It is the level of force (and a charging of the line of officers) that is likely to be the focus of any court. I still do not see the need for this level of force in the use of batons and pepper spray.
I have attached my testimony below.
The hearing went until after 2 pm.
Continue reading “Turley Testifies On The Lafayette Park Controversy [Updated]”
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.
Continue reading “TURLEY TESTIFIES AT TRUMP IMPEACHMENT HEARING”
U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta has issued a 41-page opinion in favor of the House Oversight Committee in its subpoena of the accounting firm Mazars USA to obtain financial documents related to President Donald Trump. It is a significant victory for the Congress in its fights with the White House given the ambiguously stated legislative purpose behind the demand. However, as I testified last week before the House Judiciary Committee, Congress is likely to win such fights over legislative purpose and courts are unlikely to entertain challenges based on alleged improper or political motives by Congress. It is important however to note that this was a subpoena of a private party to gain private records of Trump as an individual. Far more difficult questions are raised by a subpoena for someone like Don McGahn who did not appear today at the House Judiciary Committee.
Continue reading “Federal Judge Rules Against Trump On Subpoena For Financial Records”I will be testifying today in the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Federal Spending Oversight and Emergency Management. The hearing is entitled “War Powers and the Effects of Unauthorized Military Engagements on Federal Spending” and will address the new proposed Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) proposed by Senators Bob Corker (R-TN) and Tim Kaine (D-VA). As my testimony below discusses, the new legislation would represent an unprecedented change in the law governing war powers. The new AUMF amounts to a statutory revision of one of the most defining elements of the United States Constitution. Putting aside the constitutionality of such a change absent a formal amendment, the proposed legislation completes a long history of this body abdicating its core responsibilities over the declaration of war. Continue reading “Turley To Testify On War Powers In Senate Today”
This morning I will testify at the confirmation hearing on the nomination of the Hon. Neil Gorsuch to the United States Supreme Court. The hearing will commence around 9 am at the hearing room of Hart 216. Ironically, it is the same room that I litigated much of the Porteous impeachment case before final arguments before the 100 Senators on the Senate floor. Below is my written testimony. Continue reading “TURLEY TESTIFIES IN SENATE GORSUCH CONFIRMATION HEARING”