The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Key takeaways from House Judiciary hearing
WASHINGTON — The House’s impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump has entered a new phase, as the House Judiciary Committee conducts its own hearings to decide specifically what might be included in the impeachment articles. Wednesday’s hearing features a number of experts on impeachment. Here are some key takeaways. A signal that impeachment will include Mueller?
The House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment hearings focused almost exclusively on Ukraine. That was the new information, after all, and that’s what the witnesses could speak to.
But at the start of Wednesday’s hearing, Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., seemed to indicate he was inclined to include something else in the impeachment articles: the obstruction-of-justice portions of the Mueller investigation.
Nadler’s opening statement accused Trump of obstructing both the Ukraine probe and the Russia investigation, and it included plenty on the latter.
“When his own Justice Department tried to uncover the extent to which a foreign government had broken our laws,” Nadler said of the Russia probe, “President Trump took extraordinary and unprecedented steps to obstruct the investigation, including ignoring subpoenas, ordering the creation of false records, and publicly attacking and intimidate witnesses. Then, as now, this administration’s level of obstruction is without precedent.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller
opted not to decide whether Trump had obstructed justice, given Justice Department guidelines say a sitting president can’t be indicted. But there were five instances in which he suggested there was substantial evidence to support all three criteria for an obstruction charge.
Democrats have been quietly talking about including Mueller in the impeachment articles.
Stanford law professor takes center stage
The Judiciary Committee heard Wednesday from legal experts, delving particularly into the issue of whether Trump’s actions stemming from the July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s president rose to the constitutional level of “bribery” or “high crimes and misdemeanors” warranting impeachment.
Rep. Douglas Collins of Georgia was upbraided by one of the witnesses.
Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan noted she had worked with some of the Republicans on the committee and then addressed Collins directly. She took exception to Collins suggesting the hearings weren’t about the underlying facts and were instead about a political vendetta.
“And here, Mr. Collins, I would like to say to you, sir, that I read transcripts of every one of the witnesses who appeared in the live hearing, because I would not speak about these things without reviewing the facts,” Karlan said. “So I’m insulted by the suggestion that as a law professor, I don’t care about those facts. But everything I read on those occasions tells me that when President Trump invited — indeed demanded — foreign involvement in our upcoming election, he struck at the very heart of what makes this a republic to which we pledge allegiance.”
The three legal experts called by Democrats backed impeachment. Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law School professor, said he considered it clear that the president’s conduct met the definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
GOP witness testifies
The GOP’s lone witness at the table on Wednesday, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, is a veteran of these hearings. As he noted in his opening statement, he also testified in President Bill Clinton’s impeachment hearings.
And Turley clearly came prepared. His opening statement numbered 53 pages — significantly longer than the other witnesses’ — and contained extensive, detailed footnotes.
Perhaps his strongest argument came at the top, when he said that he has very little regard for Trump, even as he doesn’t believe Trump should be impeached.
“First, I am not a supporter of President Trump. I voted against him in 2016 and I have previously voted for Presidents Clinton and Obama,” Turley said in his written statement. “Second, I have been highly critical of President Trump, his policies and his rhetoric, in dozens of columns. Third, I have repeatedly criticized his raising of the investigation of the Hunter Biden matter with the Ukrainian president.”
Turley even said, contra Trump, that Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy “was anything but perfect.” He added in his written statement that Trump’s “reference to the Bidens was highly inappropriate.”
He even admitted the House had a legitimate reason to investigate the Ukraine situation. But he said impeachment wasn’t warranted.
Turley’s advocacy for a president he doesn’t support was a noted contrast to the other three witnesses, all of whom, as the White House quickly noted, had publicly disparaged Trump in the past. Some suggested Democrats should have invited witnesses who didn’t appear so ideologically opposed to Trump.