Four impeachment scholars to open Judiciary Committee’s hearing

WASHINGTON – Four experts on presidential impeachment will fill the witness table during the House Judiciary Committee’s opening hearing of historic proceedings to determine whether President Donald Trump should be impeached.

Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler is depicting Wednesday’s session as an opportunity to discuss the historical and constitutional basis of impeachment, and whether Trump’s alleged actions warrant pressing forward with possible articles of impeachment.

The expert witnesses announced Monday are Noah Feldman from Harvard Law School; Pamela Karlan of Stanford Law School; Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina School of Law;

and Jonathan Turley of the George Washington University Law School.

Feldman, Karlan and Gerhardt are being called to testify by Democrats, while Turley was selected

by the committee’s Republican members. Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist.

Trump’s White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, has rejected an invitation to take part in the hearing, while leaving open the possibility that the White House would mount a defense in future proceedings.

By the opening of the hearing, Nadler and the Judiciary panel expect to have the final report and recommendations from the House Intelligence Committee based on weeks of closed depositions and public hearings on Trump’s conduct in his interactions with Ukraine.

In a letter to Trump last week, Nadler previewed the conclusions of that report, based on weeks of depositions and hearings, saying it will describe an “effort in which President Trump again sought foreign interference in our elections for his personal and political benefit at the expense of our national interest.”