Impeachment witness list loaded with Trump critics Washington Examiner, Dec 2, 2019
House Democrats announced a list of four constitutional law experts who will testify at a Dec. 4 public impeachment hearing, and the panel will include pundits who have criticized the Trump administration and defended the impeachment proceedings. It also includes a witness who has criticized the impeachment investigation.
The Democrats have summoned Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law School professor, to testify in Wednesday’s hearing on the constitutional grounds for impeaching the president. Feldman was among the first people to suggest Trump was trying to bribe Ukrainian government officials into investigating his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. Democrats have adopted the term, which Feldman in September said constitutes an impeachable offense.
"What makes Trump’s alleged conduct so terrible is not that he froze aid to Ukraine for a policy purpose. What makes Trump’s alleged conduct outrageous is the appearance that he was doing it for his own personal benefit," Feldman wrote for Bloomberg Opinion.
Feldman has called for a new special counsel to investigate Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr, and he also called on Democrats to make the often secretive impeachment proceedings more accessible to the public.
Stanford Law professor Pamela Karlan, a former Obama administration Justice Department official, is also a witness, Democrats announced Monday.
Karlan is among 42 legal scholars who signed a letter before Trump took office urging him to change his views on a number of issues and criticizing his rhetoric.
"Although we sincerely hope that you will take your constitutional oath seriously, so far you have offered little indication that you will," the letter said. "We feel a responsibility to challenge you in the court of public opinion, and we hope that those directly aggrieved by your administration will challenge you in the courts of law."
A third witness, Michael Gerhardt, is a University of North Carolina law school professor who wrote in the Atlantic that the impeachment proceedings are "fully legitimate.”
A fourth witness listed by Democrats, but possibly requested by the GOP, is George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley, who has criticized how Democrats have handled the impeachment process.
Quote: EdJames wrote in post #3I’ve been looking for some clarity around the question of whether the Republicans named Turley.... seeing none yet...
OK, here it is:
Quote
Democrats will call Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law professor, Pamela Karlan, a law professor at Stanford, and Michael Gerhardt, a law professor at the University of North Carolina.
Republicans on the panel, meanwhile, will call Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who has written extensively about the Trump impeachment inquiry, as their witness.
One of the Democrats’ witnesses slated to testify before the House on Wednesday as part of the latest partisan impeachment proceedings argued more than two years ago that President Donald Trump could be impeached even without evidence of a crime.
Harvard Law School Professor Noah Feldman, who claims to specialize in constitutional studies, told The New Yorker in an article published in May 2017 that Congress could vote to impeach the president without evidence justifying a “high crime and misdemeanor” constitutionally required for presidential impeachment and removal.
The New Yorker article says:
Quote Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law School professor who specializes in constitutional studies, argues that, even without evidence of an indictable crime, the Administration’s pattern of seemingly trivial uses of public office for private gain ‘can add up to an impeachable offense.’
Feldman is set to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday to kick off phase two of the latest campaign to undo the results of the 2016 election.
One of the Democrats’ witnesses slated to testify before the House on Wednesday as part of the latest partisan impeachment proceedings argued more than two years ago that President Donald Trump could be impeached even without evidence of a crime.
Harvard Law School Professor Noah Feldman, who claims to specialize in constitutional studies, told The New Yorker in an article published in May 2017 that Congress could vote to impeach the president without evidence justifying a “high crime and misdemeanor” constitutionally required for presidential impeachment and removal.
The New Yorker article says:
Quote Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law School professor who specializes in constitutional studies, argues that, even without evidence of an indictable crime, the Administration’s pattern of seemingly trivial uses of public office for private gain ‘can add up to an impeachable offense.’
Feldman is set to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday to kick off phase two of the latest campaign to undo the results of the 2016 election.