Seriously? Trump's Morally Dubious Legal Team Calls Impeachment A "Perversion of the Constitution"

Two of the perverts' pals errr...lawyers, on Trump's trial team: Alan Dershowitz (left) and Ken Starr:

"If the Senate goes along with McConnell with a big whitewash then you will have a situation where  the Senate will have been on trial, and it may lose its Republican control in 2020."  -  Harvard Constitutional Law Prof. Lawrence Tribe, on All In, Friday .

"Amidst all of this who does Donald Trump pick to represent him at his impeachment trial?  Alan Dershowtiz and Kenneth Starr. These two famous attorneys who represented Jeffrey Epstein more than a decade ago and helped him get a sweetheart deal.  This was back when he was facing a federal indictment for sexually abusing underage girls back in 2007.  You remember the deal right? It was for only 13 months and he was regularly allowed to leave jail, to apparently return to his decades long abuse of girls and young women"-  Chris Hayes on 'All In', Friday night


Maureen Dowd, in her recent (Jan. 19) column best summed up the creeps that Dotard has chosen as the top lawyers to defend him, first turning to Ken Starr:

"The Starr chamber was a shameful period of American history, with the prissy Puritan independent counsel hounding and virtually jailing Monica Lewinsky and producing hundreds of pages of panting, bodice-ripping prose that read more like bad erotica than a federal report, rife with lurid passages about breasts, stains and genitalia.....Even Trump was appalled. “Starr’s a freak,” the bloviating builder told me back in 1999. “I bet he’s got something in his closet.” In other interviews, he called Starr “a lunatic,” “a disaster” and “off his rocker,”..

Starr, who once clutched his pearls over Bill Clinton’s sexual high jinks, is now going to bat for President “Access Hollywood.”

In 2007, he defended Jeffrey Epstein. By 2016, Starr was being ousted as president of Baptist Baylor University for failing to protect women and looking the other way when football players were accused and sometimes convicted of sexual assault"

It was the Starr Report, co-authored by the newly (SC)- installed right wing weasel  Brett Kavanaugh, which laid out the  spurious case for Clinton’s impeachment and removal from office, based on Monica Lewinsky's illegally- obtained taped spiels with  Linda Tripp.  As I pointed out in my Sept. 14, 2018 post, that tape "evidence" ought to have been inadmissible given procuring it was a felony under then Maryland law. (One cannot secretly tape the words of another over the phone without informing them first.)

Ms. Dowd then fixes attention on Dershowitiz:

"And then there’s Dershowitz, whose past clients have included such sterling fellows as Epstein, Claus von Bülow, O.J. Simpson and Harvey Weinstein. How did he miss Ted Bundy?"

All of this is  relevant now as we read in the press (e.g. Denver Post, Jan. 19th) 

"The Trump team called the Senate's formal impeachment summons to the two articles of impeachment  'a dangerous attack on the right of the American people to freely choose their president."

Which is a pile of ripe merde. First, it did not amount to any "attack" on an American's "right" to freely choose a president. It DID remind us that when a deranged and low IQ minority faction exercises such right without regard to common sense we all pay - in that we get a demented demagogue capable of doing untold damage to the Republic.  The Trump team that made such a wacko remark to the media then needs to be reminded of the words of James Madison - who defined the mischief of 'minority faction' in Federalist No 10, i.e.:

"Citizens - whether amounting to a minority or majority of the whole - are united and actuated by a common impulse of passion (to cast their votes) adverse to the rights of other citizens or the permanent and aggregate interests of the community".  

This is exactly what the Trump voters ('the minority")  did, motivated by passion and recklessness via Trump's often violent rallies to give a middle finger salute to the rest of the country - thereby militating against the majority's interests.  They knew just as well as anyone  the degenerate and destructive nature of this filth, but cast ballots for him anyway. Enough, namely 77,000 in three key states (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan) , to put him over the top in electoral votes.  

But it then fell to the state  Electors to correct the voting anomaly. To do their sworn duty, i.e. not to rubber stamp a malicious choice, but to set it right and prevent an unhinged, authoritarian demagogue from attaining the highest office.  Alexander Hamilton, for his part,   held that the same electors could ensure the integrity of the office through their own discretion which may diverge from what the people themselves voted for (particularly if motivated by passion as opposed to reason).

Thus we read in Federalist # 78:

"The process of election (by state electors) affords a moral certainty that the office of President shall never fall to the lot of any man who is not to an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications...."

Read that last sentence again:   The office of the President shall never fall to the lot of any man who is not to an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.


The FACT of Trump's debased being and premoral character was exposed for all to see in the recent  blistering editorial from a prominent evangelical magazine, Christianity Today.  That, combined with his brazen extortion of the Ukrainian President (Volodymyr Zelenskiy) shows clearly he is a human maggot and unfit to run a dog kennel- far less a nation.  So no one on God's green Earth (not even the inimitable commenter "Publius" - suddenly exposed as a rabid Trumpster)   can tell me with a straight face that Trump, aka Dotard, is "endowed with the requisite qualifications".

Secondly, the Trump team shows itself to be ignorant buffoons by asserting an Article 1 power exercised by the democratically elected House, can in any way be interpreted as an "attack" on a lawless renegade, rogue president.  One who aspires to absolute power, as when he appointed Bill Barr as his personal "Roy Cohn".   Thus, the Trump team's further hysterical blather (ibid.):

"This is a brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election and interfere with the 2020 election"

Is just fulsome codswallop of the most head -spinning form, especially given it is precisely Trump's extortion effort which marked the actual interference effort in the coming election - stopped in its tracks thanks to a patriot whistleblower.  Further, the nonpartisan GAO has further reinforced Trump's criminality by referring outright to what he did as a crime. The specific law at issue is the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. 

But for sheer brazen ignorance of the Constitution it's hard to rival Alan Dershowtiz who has repeatedly expelled this verbal vomit on assorted appearances the past few days (e.g. in an interview with MSNBC host Ari Melber):

"The abuse of power - even if proved - is not an impeachable offense.  The Founders never gave congress the authority to overrule the president because he abused his power.  So then they (congress) have to prove treason,, bribery or other crimes and misdemeanors."

This twaddle so amazed MSNBC host Chris Hayes on Friday he had to replay the segment for senior Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe - who responded thusly : (See e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADCUGx9wHhE  

"I almost don't know where to start. My colleague has it upside down. I knew the Trump defense was going to rely on to a large extent on alternative facts,  but I didn't know they were also going to use alternative law.

There is no legal principle that says something has to violate a federal criminal statute to be impeachable.  When the impeachment power was put in the Constitution there were no federal criminal statutes.  As the House report accompanying these articles of impeachment says, what is being charged against the president happens to be a federal crime: felony bribery.  And on top of that yesterday we learned from the accountability office that the president is indeed breaking the law, the impoundment control act.

So that's why I don't know where to start since Alan is completely wacko on this.  So I don't understand why the president thinks it will help him to have this kind of bizarro defense."

Well of course it's likely  to have more than a little success because the Trump team knows there are millions of dumb clucks - fed on FOX News claptrap and propaganda - who start with lower IQs  and will be dumb enough to believe anything Trump's team churns out.

Prof. Tribe even gives an example from Dershowitz own recent book on how far he's willing to take this asinine bull pockey, citing a hypothetical president like Trump allowing Putin to take Alaska - "like he took Crimea."  And as Prof. Tribe adds: "That would be pretty bad, says Alan Dershowitz, but it wouldn't be a federal crime and would not be impeachable."

That's how far down the rabbit hole of irrational bullshit we've been led by these liars, Reich framers and PR artists.   Indeed, they totally ignore as well Trump's efforts to have repealed the Foreign Corrupt Bribery Act - which would have allowed outright bribery, say by a foreign power. (As reported in the new book, 'A Very Stable Genius' by Philip Rucker and Carol Loennig).

The latest tally of Trump's lies is now 16, 241, not counting all those he will likely spew in the wake of publication of Rucker's and Loennig's book.    What is clear is that this shameless liar, sex pervert (pussy grabber) and bellicose buffoon has indisputably picked the legal team that best jibes with his dubious character. Oh, and all the Repuke traitors and enablers who will now do their damndest to protect his sorry, fat orange hide over the country and the Constitution. 

 As for the rest of us - the normal, rational part of the populace, we expect Trump's team  will be allowed a total propaganda cover up - especially after Moscow Mitch has delivered his "resolution" for 12 trial rules,  which includes that all the evidence presented must now be voted on.  This despite the fact the House impeachment procedure and evidence assembly was impeccable, well organized.   E.g. from the first link given below:

"Legal experts Benjamin Wittes and Quinta Jurecic, in an article for The Atlantic, assert that there is an enormous difference between the two: while the House brief is professionally organized, the one from Team Trump is a rambling mess that reads like “the scream of a wounded animal.”

Potemkin trial anyone?  Buckle your seat belts, kiddies, for a wild Senate trial the next few weeks, including Moscow Mitch trying to contain the damning revelations. And, if allowed at all (by vote), then only disclosed past midnight EST. Oh, and also if Bolton does wish to testify (and enough Repubs join the Dems to vote for it), no public hearings will be allowed because of "national security implications".  Translation: the revelations may produce too much damage to Herr Trump. E.g.

Trump’s lawyers, Senate GOP allies work privately to ensure Bolton does not testify publicly


See also:

Alex Henderson

Donald Trump | Impeachment

Legal Experts Compare Trump Lawyers’ Impeachment Brief to the ‘Scream of a Wounded Animal’

And:

Impeachment | Senate

What to Expect next Week as the Senate Impeachment Trial Begins

And:

Impeachment | Mitch McConnell

Moscow Mitch, Perjurer

And:

Donald Trump | Impeachment

Trump Just Picked Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz for His Senate Trial — and It’s Already Humiliating for Them All

And:

Impeachment | Mitch McConnell | Senate

Mitch McConnell's Senate Impeachment Trial — Cut! 

www.thenation.com › article › the-trump-allegations-as-jane-doe-brea...

Jonathan Turley Whiffs Vs. More Learned Constitutional Scholars At House Judiciary Hearing

"We don’t need Professor Turley’s hand-wringing performance to scare us away from defending our democracy through the exercise of our political power to hold an oligarchic authoritarian accountable. Exercising our accountability muscle will make a stronger, not weaker in the future. It will make us more familiar with the source of our political authority and power and will protect us against further abuses in the future, not make us vulnerable to them, as Professor Turley suggests.

President Trump needs to be impeached for his shocking and multi-dimensional misconduct. But the people need him held accountable for another reason: We need him held accountable to reconnect with the underlying authority on which our democracy is based and to start cleansing our society of the noxious false relativism infecting our public debate, such as we witnessed yesterday in Professor Turley’s performance." -    Hank Edson, 'Professor Turley Is Dead Wrong On Impeachment, And Here's Why', smirkingchimp.com (link at bottom)

"The Republicans are arguing that if a president stands in the middle of Fifth Avenue, fires a gun and misses someone, just leave him alone. He didn't do anything wrong. That's an insane argument!"

Chris Mathews last night, MSNBC, 'Hardball'

As I watched the next phase of the impeachment inquiry unfold yesterday,  with the House Judiciary Committee  hearings featuring four constitutional scholars,  the Reeptard minority didn't waste time wasting time .  Almost before  Chairman Jerry Nadler could get the first words out of his mouth, e.g.

“Never before has a president engaged in a course of conduct that included all the acts that most concerned the framers,”

The bankrupt Reeps resorted to procedural objections and high-temperature harangues in an effort to protect Traitor Trump.   It was as if the imbeciles knew in advance their case would be skewered by the 3 real constitutional scholars the Dems had selected as witnesses. (Noah Feldman of Harvard, Pamela Karlan of Stanford, Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina.)

 So what does an imbecile do confronted by such intellectual firepower?   And when they only have in their corner a William Barr crony and pal like Jonathan Turley?  Well, they must resort to chaos and impotent huff and puff to try to impede or distract.

 Thus the hapless Reepos lodged a series of rapid-fire interruptions and parliamentary "inquiries" as the hearing began, interrupting the first witnesses and leading Nadler to resort repeatedly to his gavel.  At one point I actually thought Nadler would use his gavel on one of their heads.  Aside from the typical Reepo clown show, the other farce was the interminable grandstanding. Thus, one beheld Georgia congressman Doug Collins, the top Republican on the committee, accusing Democrats of moving to impeach Trump,   “because you just don’t like the guy”.

Uh, no, lunkhead, it's because they don't want our nation ruled by some halfwit, half mad wannabe King.  Especially a two bit former Queens lowlife,  grifter, real estate chiseler and former reality show mutt who fancies himself a latter day monarch.   The cornpone Collins then burped out perhaps the most presumptuous bark of all: 

“The American people is [sic] really gonna look at this and say, ‘Huh? What are we doing?’” .

Nope. That take would apply for the lower half of the IQ curve, in the parlance of Harvard prof Harvey Mansfield - referring to those who voted Trump in 2016.  The rest of the people, I am confident, have enough brain cells to see what the House is doing is impeaching a thug who thinks he can rule the nation like he ran his scam real estate properties and fraudulent fronts like "Trump University".

The cornpone congress critter then yapped sarcastically:

“We’ve got law professors here.  What a start to a party!"”

But not a "party" for the Reeptardos who the three actual scholars beat down mercilessly - especially in one exchange when Stanford Professor Pamela Karlan directly challenged the Georgian dolt when he claimed the scholars "didn't do their homework".

Looking back on the nine hours of testimony and questioning it's a pity that  professor  Karlan never had George Washington University "scholar"  Jonathan Turley as a student.   She might have spared him from the display of rank sophistry he exhibited in his assorted turns to speak during the  hearing yesterday.    

The three professors called by Dems were on the mark in presenting coherent, well -argued cases that Trump's abuses of power  offered  the textbook case for impeachable offenses as defined in the Constitution.  

Meanwhile, CBS legal  analyst and GWU prof Turley tried to use language parsing and hair splitting  to argue there was an insufficient threshold to impeach.  (This is the same turkey who - some 20 years earlier- said that Bill Clinton had to be impeached for a sexual peccadillo. Oh wait! I forgot, he lied about having a sex act! My bad! But hey, he didn't try to barter away the upcoming 2000 election for a "favor, though"!)

According to Turley there was no real bribery by Trump, i.e. that met the standard for impeachment, nor any obstruction.  Evidently Turley believed for the latter to genuinely happen the Dems would have to produce "real" evidence - given that what existed didn't count. (Hours of witness testimony, including first hand listening in to the call, the call transcript itself- released I might add, after the whistle got blown, Mulvaney's own admission of quid pro quo etc.)  Bottom line, this existence of actual evidence isn't rocket science or quantum physics, for Pete's sake.  Any brainless zombot ought to be able to figure it out, without a constitutional law degree.

So in other words, we have more than ample 'there,  there' - the proverbial smoking gun if you will- without going further as Turley demands. As Michael Gerhardt, the University of North Carolina law professor made clear:

 “If what we’re talking about is not impeachable, then nothing is impeachable,” 

As for bribery,  Prof. Karlan also had to correct Turley on  his truncated take by using a 1792 definition from  dictionary by Samuel Johnson.   My primary complaint with Turley has to do with his use of sophisticated  language manipulation, or what one blogger (P.M. Carpenter) called "fussiness".   In this case, one found abundant "Turleyisms" popping up comparable to the "Posnerisms" exposed by serious JFK assassination researchers  from Gerald Posner's book, 'Case Closed".  

Twelve of the most serious “Posnerisms”  are documented here:

http://assassinationweb.com/twpos.htm

Those who take the time to examine, study the examples in the link will become aware of an unnerving lack of attention to detail and a penchant for what appears to be deliberate misrepresentation.  Turley,  by contrast,  doesn't employ deliberate misrepresentation but rather technical twisting of aspects of the law (in relation to the Constitution and impeachment powers therein)  leading to obfuscation.  An obfuscation of the meaning of "bribery" and an obfuscation of the meaning of "obstruction".  Of course, his expansive, I'd say preposterous, interpretation of executive privilege lies at the heart of both obfuscations.

In regard to the "high crimes and misdemeanors" cited in the Constitution, Turley asserted (my paraphrasing) 'Yeah, but I would prefer a felony as a prerequisite".   That, my friends, is a Turleyism.  The reason is that the Constitution makes no such requirement. As MSNBC legal guru Ari Melber put it in the discussion during the lunch break: "If that's what Turley demands he needs to write an amendment and add it to the Constitution".  

Ari went on to expatiate:

"There's a larger stupidity here which is important, because Americans are watching this. You don't need an underlying crime to remove a president. And the reason is very simple; There's all sorts of things that are criminal but are not an abuse of power. It is a felony to deface a mailbox. But definitely not impeachable. I don't think you'll find serious scholars who'd suggest otherwise. And yet, that would be the needed crime in what Turley said was the extra prerequisite he wants to add.

And on the flip side you have abuses of power that may not be a felony, which is important for everyone to understand.  Why? Because most citizens don't have those powers to wield. So you don't have laws that say 'you can't steal money from the OMB to give to a foreign country'  because most people aren't in any position to seize and appropriate those funds.  So for this professor Turley to say no, you still gotta double back to the courts, well that's just not what the Constitution says. "

Prof. Kaplan also used the example of the vandalism of a mail box, a specified felony.  If a president were to commit such a felony - while a serious statutory crime - it would still not be impeachable. Why not? Because there is no linkage to an abuse of the power of his office, as Ari Melber explained. What's he gaining in terms of his self-interest by wrecking a mail box? Only a lot of bad press.

We can also reference a divergence from what Turley himself once opined in a WaPo piece ('Five Myths About Impeachment')

"While there's a high bar for what constitutes impeachment, an offense does not have to be indictable. Serious misconduct or a violation of the public trust is enough."

Well, at least for one time in one political epoch you got it right, son.  

So it was kind of mind boggling to then see Turley babbling:

"There's  difference between requesting investigations and  a quid pro quo. You need to stick the landing on the quid pro quo. You need to get the evidence to support it. It may be out there, I don't know, but it's not in this record."

Which makes one wonder what 'record'  Turley is accessing, or if he's tripping out on MJ candies when he does. As Caroline Frederickson of the American Constitution Society pointed out after the hearings, on 'Hardball':  "Professor Karlin described what is the essence of an impeachable offense. Going to a foreign government and saying 'we're not gonna give you money unless you say you're gonna investigate my political rival.'  This is absolutely the essence of an impeachable offense."

That offense, I might add, lies right in the open in the transcript of the July 25th phone conversation, in tandem with the timeline (only released after the whistleblower's whistle), pointing unambiguously to Trump's grievous misconduct. One doesn't need an advanced degree in political science or government to figure that out - it's out in the bloody open!

 If instead of the existing record, Turley is  referencing the gaps inferred from “unsubpoenaed witnesses with material evidence,”  that's also a joke.   As former Watergate prosecutor Richard Ben -Veniste put it on 'Hardball":

"This is a most amusing argument given the president has ordered the very witnesses Mr. Turley is talking about not to cooperate. This is like a defendant who's convicted of poisoning his parents, throwing himself on the mercy of the court, because he's an orphan."

In other words, an out and out "Turleyism" on a par with Posner's Posnerisms.

As for Turley's obsession with the Dems'  "speed" (his stated dismay with “the abbreviated period of this investigation”), this is irrelevant, because the Constitution makes no demand on whether the impeachment process ought to be slow or fast.  In fact, one can conceive of occasions where speed in acting is imperative. Say a deranged president holding up critical disaster relief unless the governor of a state complies with a demand to slime his political opponent.  

Even more powerful was Harvard Prof. Lawrence Tribe's observation last night (MSNBC, 'Last Word'):

"Obviously, what he's trying to do is drag this out so there's no time left to a potentially corrupted 2020 election. That is a prescription for disaster. The idea that we need to have this thing saturate and pickle for a while longer is just crazy. When you have a president  who orders the entire executive branch to stonewall, then whenever any subpoena ends up in court and says 'now you got to wait til the courts decide' that's a prescription for not having an impeachment power."

Law professor Paul Butler last night also diced Turley's "too hasty" argument (from a historical perspective)  by noting this impeachment process will already take longer than either that for Andrew Johnson or Bill Clinton.  Adding: "This is going to be the most scholarly, well developed impeachment inquiry in our history".  So much for Turley's insipid claim of a "slipshod impeachment."  Maybe Turley needs to get Prof. Butler to give him some remedial  historical impeachment tutoring. 

Turley also showed he was prepared to award Trump unlimited Executive Privilege, by asserting he was opposed to  Article 3 of the Nixon impeachment. What was that? Refusing to turn over items, e.g. the tapes, in response to lawful subpoenas. This prattle alone showed Turley's arguments were basically sophomoric compared to the three other genuine constitutional law scholars.

In effect, if one accepts Turley's spurious claim then it follows any president who's willing to dig in and stonewall subpoenas for documents and testimony can use the courts to run out the clock, undermining the House’s ability to use its impeachment power in practice. Indeed, another Harvard constitutional law professor - Lawrence Tribe- appearing on 'All In' (Nov. 21) scuttled this nonsense one time:

"This unprecedented erection of a stone wall in which he directs everybody connected to the White House and State Department not to testify, not to comply with subpoenas.  That amounts to contempt of congress - a far more sweeping  violation of separation of powers than even Richard Nixon was guilty of, cited in impeachment article 3."

Basically then, Trump and his Reep cult participated in the stonewalling, but they're now trying to blame the results of their subpoena blockade on the Democrats.  Meanwhile, Turley is trying to argue that  the House Dems are stuck with the stone walling,  so they ought to suck it up. There is "not enough evidence to impeach" without the added witnesses, documents, but the Trump stone walling won't allow it. And oh, Trump is justified in doing this. This is nuts, madness. It is essentially asserting there is NO impeachment power, period.

I suspect Prof. Tribe and the three professors featured yesterday as pro-impeachment know a tad more than Mr. Turley.  As P.M. Carpenter put it (see first link in previous blog post) comparing the different presentations:

"Turley was just as singular in message, but somewhat comical in substance; his testimony had none, in terms of addressing the president's many unmistakable abuses of power"

However, Turley does get some performing credit for being facetious, i.e.  at the time when he blurted:

 "We are all mad. ..My kids are mad. My wife is mad ... even my dog, a golden doodle".  

Adding:

"Will a slipshod impeachment make us less mad or will it only give an invitation for the madness to follow in every future administration?”

Prof. Tribe, I imagine, would respond to Turley here by telling him any impeachment of a president is going to make somebody, some group mad. Mainly because impeachment is more a political process than a legal one. Thus, the Trumpie dolts - those who voted for this disgusting, worthless imp-  will certainly be "mad" as impeachment progresses.  (And oh, even as Trump takes their food stamps away by April 1st.) Why mad?  Not because anyone is trying to "redo the 2016 election" but because their little bitch will finally be held to account, as they will - as the 'minority faction" Hamilton and Madison warned us about. The lot of reckless fools who blindly put a demagogue into power.

Turley claimed before any charge for obstruction is offered, it must first go through the courts.  Each court decision must be rendered in turn, and all exhausted, finally (presumably) ending up at the Supreme Court. Only then in the final ruling stage, if Trump refuses to comply, can  charge of obstruction be leveled.

Again, if one accepts this codswallop, it means he also accepts any president can use a total blockade of lawful subpoenas in tandem with the courts,  to "run out the clock" -  thereby rendering one branch of government redundant.   This is in direct contradiction to the Article 1 powers allotted congress by the Constitution. As Michael Tomasky so aptly put it: "Are the Democrats supposed to wait until next October to make sure they don’t miss anything?"

On the plus side-   like Bob Mueller- Turley did not assert Trump did nothing wrong, as his hard-core zombies have done. He said that the July 25th  call in which Trump pressured Ukraine’s president Zelenskiy to announce investigations that could benefit him politically “was anything but perfect,” and that Congress had a legitimate reason to scrutinize it.  Wow, will wonders never cease.  But the thing is that call amounted to an extortion, or a bare bones bribe and congress had an absolute duty to not only investigate but impeach.  In any case, Turley's modified statement doesn't redeem his sophomoric attempts to rescue Trump, or the GOP's specious case.

As for the Dems they need to move on the articles of impeachment in an expeditious manner and avoid the temptation to overthink - in which case they may end up not far from Turley's twaddle.  As Michael Tomasky put it in his NY Times piece yesterday:

"I’m not convinced that the American public will find seven articles of impeachment more persuasive than two."  

Adding: .

"His violations matter more than the specific degree to which the Democrats officially remonstrate with him for them. ...There’s a decent argument for throwing the hot potato to Mitch McConnell and shaming him, and the Senate Republicans, for abasing themselves with a blanket exoneration of Mr. Trump."

With which I agree. And also, in the process, shaming transparent  twits and sophomoric lackeys like Jonathan Turley.

Update - Addendum: To show how marginal Turley's arguments are, 500 constitutional scholars have since signed a letter attesting to their agreement with the arguments made by the three Democratic witnesses, Profs. Karlan, Gerhardt and Feldman.


See also:

Donald Trump | Impeachment

Professor Turley Is Dead Wrong on Impeachment and Here’s Why

Excerpt:

"In his opening statement emphasizing the importance of legal standards, George Washington University constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley claimed that impeaching, “a president on this record would expose every future president to the same type of inchoate impeachment” and warned, “I hope you will consider what you will do when the wind blows again perhaps for a Democratic president.”

In making this argument, Turley might just as well have argued that the founding patriots should not have declared independence because once they were in power, the people might declare their independence from them. The founding patriots, after all, were not asserting a codified legal standard in declaring their independence, they were asserting their political power. The source of the people’s political power sufficient to overthrow codified law, the Declaration itself announced, was not the written codes authored by human beings, but the “self-evident” truths describing natural law. 

Faced with Turley’s argument, our founding patriots might well have said, “If we, as governors of the people, deserve it, let the people declare their independence from us.” Indeed, Thomas Jefferson famously welcomed such exercise of the people’s authority under natural law to assert their political power when he said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” But Jefferson and the other founding patriots were also wise enough to allow for a process that would avoid the need for such bloodshed in the assertion of the people’s authority and power under natural law to remove an illegitimate government. They gave us impeachment."

And:

Donald Trump | Impeachment

Three Constitutional Law Professors on Behalf of Impeachment Vs. One Law Professor on Behalf of Fussiness