Wednesday Impeachment Testimony Devastates Trump/GOP

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This Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee kicked off their first public hearing in the impeachment inquiry. Following previous fact-finding hearings led by the Intelligence Committee, the Wednesday Judiciary event is hosting four Constitutional law experts slated to discuss the legal basis for impeaching President Donald Trump. The three of those who are Democrats’ witnesses were quickly poised to deliver condemning testimony that’s intensely destabilizing to whatever ramshackle Trump defense had been sustained to this point. In short, they insisted that Trump’s abuse of power perfectly fits the bill for impeachment.

The scandal driving the impeachment centers on Trump’s effort, which many close allies helped along, to get Ukraine to produce dirt on the Bidens over baseless allegations of corruption. That potentially damaging intel could be helpful to a Trump general election campaign if he faces Joe Biden in 2020.

Harvard Law School Professor Noah Feldman laid out the case in his opening statement:

‘The solicitation constituted an abuse of the office of the presidency because Pres. Trump was using his office to seek a personal political and electoral advantage over his political rival, former vice president Joe Biden, and over the Democratic Party. The solicitation was made in the course of the president’s official duties. According to the testimony presented to the House, the solicitation sought to gain an advantage that was personal to the president. This constitutes a corrupt abuse of the power of the presidency. It embodies the framers’ central worry that a sitting president would “spare no efforts or means whatever to get himself re-elected.”’

CNN notes that this reliance on the perspectives from around the time of the framing of the Constitution may be a bid to attract conservatives who generally rely on that sort of “originalist” approach, but it’s unclear that the gambit will actually work.

Republicans in Congress have already proven that they’re ready and willing to follow Trump off into whatever conspiratorial nonsense suits him. In their recent impeachment report summarizing their minority perspective on the first hearings, they packed in the Russian propaganda claim that actually, Ukrainians were major meddlers in 2016 U.S. elections. In a recent television appearance, prominent Trump ally Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) added the ridiculous claim that the then-Ukrainian president was “actively working” for Hillary Clinton during 2016.

They’ve got little basis to engage with the actual substance of the case. This Wednesday, their one witness is George Washington University Law School Professor Jonathan Turley, who says Democrats’ process is too rushed. Republicans will likely rely solely on his testimony and refuse to acknowledge any legitimacy to any of the rest of it.

Turley claimed:

‘It’s rushed. They also have problems with some of the crimes they’ve alleged which is why I lay it out each one by one. It doesn’t follow case law.’

On his own time, Trump has resorted to bizarre assertions. While at a NATO summit in London, he insisted of the House Intelligence Committee chairman:

‘I think he’s a maniac. I think Adam Schiff is a deranged human being. I think he grew up with a complex for lots of reasons that are obvious. I think he’s a very sick man. And he lies.’

Just another day in Trump World!

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