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The Impeachment of President Donald J. Trump

General Discussion
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#1687

Turley’s arguments on the Constitution do reflect who he is in favor of…see his argument to impeach Obama.

Turley: Obama’s "Become The Very Danger The Constitution Was Designed To Avoid

REP. BOB GOODLATTE (R-VA): Professor Turley, the constitution, the system of separated powers is not simply about stopping one branch of government from usurping another. It’s about protecting the liberty of Americans from the dangers of concentrated government power. How does the president’s unilateral modification of act of Congress affect both the balance of power between the political branches and the liberty interests of the American people?

JONATHAN TURLEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The danger is quite severe. The problem with what the president is doing is that he’s not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system. He’s becoming the very danger the Constitution was designed to avoid. That is the concentration of power in every single branch.

This Newtonian orbit that the three branches exist in is a delicate one but it is designed to prevent this type of concentration. There is two trends going on which should be of equal concern to all members of Congress. One is that we have had the radical expansion of presidential powers under both President Bush and President Obama. We have what many once called an imperial presidency model of largely unchecked authority. And with that trend we also have the continued rise of this fourth branch. We have agencies that are quite large that issue regulations. The Supreme Court said recently that agencies could actually define their own or interpret their own jurisdiction. (House hearing, December 3, 2013)

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#1688


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#1689

That clip tho! :raised_hands:

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#1690




Excerpts from Seth Abramson’s thread:


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#1691

10 takeaways from the impeachment hearing: Legal scholars in plain English

Amid talk of King George III, the Secret Treaty of Dover and necromancy, here’s what stood out.

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#1692

Blake Anderson, lawyer

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#1693

House committee chair calls for investigation into $400 million border wall contract

The chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security on Wednesday called for an investigation into a $400 million border wall contract awarded this week to North Dakota-based Fisher Sand and Gravel, a company President Trump personally urged military officials to hire.

In a letter to the Defense Department Office of Inspector General, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said there are reasons to be suspicious of the decision to bestow such a large contract on the company. Thompson cited Trump’s repeated promotion of Fisher to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and a recent visit by the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to a span of privately financed barrier the firm built outside El Paso.

Read Thompson’s letter

“These actions raise concerns about the possibility of inappropriate influence on USACE’s contracting decision,” Thompson wrote. “Therefore, I am requesting that you review the award of this contract to ensure that the bid submitted by Fisher Sand and Gravel Co. met the solicitation standards and that USACE made the award in accordance with federal procurement law and regulations.”

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#1694

GOP embraces a debunked Ukraine conspiracy to defend Trump from impeachment

Much of the Republican Party is pressing ahead with debunked claims about Ukraine as they defend President Trump from possible impeachment, embracing Russian-fueled conspiracy theories that seek to cast blame on Kyiv rather than Moscow for interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

The increasingly aggressive GOP efforts continued Tuesday on Capitol Hill and were amplified throughout conservative media, one day after House Republicans released a 123-page document that insisted that Trump’s handling of Ukraine was founded on “genuine and reasonable” suspicions — despite mounting evidence rejecting that assertion and warning of its consequences.

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#1695

‘Are you ready?’: Pelosi makes clear to Democrats that impeachment is coming

According to multiple Democratic lawmakers who attended a closed-door Capitol meeting, Pelosi announced no firm decision or timeline in moving toward a vote on Trump’s impeachment. But, a day after Schiff delivered a 300-page report detailing charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress against Trump, she made clear what lies ahead in the House.

“Are you ready?” Pelosi (D-Calif.) asked her colleagues, after describing grave constitutional circumstances posed by Trump’s alleged wrongdoing surrounding his dealings with Ukraine and his subsequent decision to stonewall the House investigation into it.

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#1696

Trump Blocked Key Impeachment Witnesses. Should Congress Wait?

Democrats have conceded that they would like to obtain more documents and hear more testimony from Mr. Trump’s key aides, but they have also argued that the evidence they have is sufficient to impeach him — and said it is absurd for the White House to contend their case has holes when it is thwarting their access to more information.

When a president systematically blockades congressional subpoenas and instructs current and former aides not to providedocuments and testimony, that is another basis to impeach, argued another witness, Michael J. Gerhardt, a University of North Carolina law professor and author of “The Federal Impeachment Process: A Constitutional and Historical Analysis.”

“In this situation, the full-scale obstruction of those subpoenas, I think, torpedoes separation of powers and, therefore, your only recourse is to, in a sense, protect your institutional prerogatives, and that would include impeachment,” Mr. Gerhardt testified.

Notably, Mr. Turley did not assert the president did nothing wrong, as hard-core supporters of Mr. Trump have done. He said that a now famous call in which Mr. Trump pressured Ukraine’s president to announce investigations that could benefit him politically “was anything but perfect,” and that Congress had a legitimate reason to scrutinize it.

But, he argued, it is premature to rush forward with impeachment while Congress has yet to obtain potentially knowable facts about what Mr. Trump said to his aides about withholding a White House meeting and $391 million in military aid that Ukraine desperately needed to shore up its defenses against Russian aggression.

Much of the evidence the House uncovered in its inquiry was from witnesses who largely were a degree of separation removed from Mr. Trump himself. As a result, they were unable to say whether the president ever directly and explicitly said he was conditioning a meeting and the securing of funding for the specific purpose of coercing Ukraine’s president into announcing investigations that would benefit him politically.

In his longer written statement, Mr. Turley named three men who interacted directly with the president and might know more about what Mr. Trump said behind closed doors about Ukraine: Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, John R. Bolton; his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani; and his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney.

Mr. Bolton is known to have opposed what Mr. Giuliani was doing for Mr. Trump with Ukraine, met directly with Mr. Trump to discuss the frozen aid to Ukraine in August and has coyly indicated that he knows something important that Congress does not yet know.

“There remain core witnesses and documents that have not been sought through the courts,” Mr. Turley wrote, adding that the House “is moving forward based on conjecture, assuming what the evidence would show if there existed the time or inclination to establish it.”

But Mr. Turley made only a passing reference in his written statement to the problem that has bedeviled impeachment investigators: The White House has directed top aides to Mr. Trump not to cooperate with the House, while asserting that they are immune from being subpoenaed to testify about their discussions with the president.

Power of Impeachment - Article I Section 2 Clause 5

“5: The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.”

I don’t know what constitution he’s reading but it plainly says it’s up to the House of Representatives to impeach. Not ask for a ruling from the judicial branch over subpoenas. This fellow seems confused. What do y’all think? :thinking:

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#1697

Cross posting :pray:

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#1698

Documents from today’s hearing

Witnesses

Professor Noah Feldman
Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law and Director, Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law, Harvard Law School

Professor Michael Gerhardt
Burton Craige Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence, The University of North Carolina School of Law

Professor Pamela S. Karlan
Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law and Co-Director, Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, Stanford Law School

Professor Jonathan Turley
J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law, George Washington University Law School

Documents

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#1699

12/04/19 Hearing on Constitutional Framework for Impeachment

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#1700

:headphones: LISTEN: The Daily explains the difference between the public hearing proceedings in the Judiciary Committee vs what we saw in the Intel Committee hearings.

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#1701

Not sure about this. Someone may have more info to verify the accuracy of this report. If true, a sad and very significant development.

#1702

Sorry! seems to be a bullSh*t story from a fake site - the photo is apparently of a woman professor teaching in Canada. Please disregard.

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#1703

Thanks for looking into this; I am using what you’ve found here to warn others of the disinformation attempt, as that site will inevitably come up.

UPDATE:


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This could well explain why they used a Canadian professor’s picture for their fake diplomat.

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#1704



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Matt Gaetz Makes A Fool Of Himself At Trump Impeachment Hearing

Faux News is using the “my dog ate my homework” defense to suggest somebody ELSE used Devin Nunes’ phone for multiple long conversations with Giuliani associate Lev Parnas.

Seriously.

Law Professor Gives Damning Testimony On Trump Soliciting Foreign Election Interference

Stanford professor Pamela S. Karlan used a domestic analogy to put Trump’s withholding of aid to Ukraine in context.

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#1705

::sighs::
And here is the part where the man being tried just dictated how his own trial will be run.
In any other trial this would be witness tampering, jury fixing, and bribing the judge all at once.

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He also just contradicted ALL of his party’s complaints about the impeachment process being too fast. Let’s see them how long it takes them to do yet another Trump tweet 180.





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#1706

The Impeachment Inquiry into President Donald J. Trump: Presentations from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and House Judiciary Committee

Date:

Monday, December 9, 2019 - 9:00am

Location:

1100 Longworth House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515

The Impeachment Inquiry into President Donald J. Trump: Presentations from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and House Judiciary Committee

Subcommittees:

The next hearing has been scheduled for Monday. FYI, Dec. 20th is the last day of this Congress. The next Congress won’t return until January 7th, 2020.

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