As you may have heard there is an impeachment hearing in the House Judiciary today. Consider this your all purpose thread for comments and discussion on that. It is set up as a teaching class on “what impeachment is”. There are four witnesses, all Constitutional law professors. Noah Feldman, Pamela Karlan, Michael Gerhardt and Jonathan Turley. The first three are excellent voices, especially Pam Karlan. Pam is brilliant, and if I had my way, she would have been on the Supreme Court instead of Elena Kagan. She is really special. Feldman and Gerhardt are very good too. Turley is the annoying turd in the fishbowl, and that is exactly why the Republican minority is putting him up.
Frankly not sure anything worthwhile will be accomplished today. Doug Collins, Jim Jordan and Louis Gohmert are going to scream and shout. Nadler has never been good at controlling his huge and races committee. It will not be as lame as the Lewandowski hearing, but will likely be as bad or worse than the Mueller session. I’ll also add that the decision to pout up some professors instead of fact witnesses strikes me as silly. Today is also likely to show exactly why Pelosi is still derelict in how she has commanded the process. There should have been a select special impeachment committee in order to avoid this kind of nonsense.
~ ~ ~
Links for streaming:
HJC’s site: https://judiciary.house.gov/legislation/hearings/impeachment-inquiry-president-donald-j-trump-constitutional-grounds
C-SPAN: https://www.c-span.org/video/?466833-1/judiciary-hearing-constitutional-framework-impeachment
~ ~ ~
Additional documents:
House Intelligence Committee’s report based on their investigation and collected testimony
Just Security has testimony from today’s witnesses:
Noah Feldman — American author and Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
Michael Gerhardt — Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill.
Pamela Karlan — professor of law at Stanford Law School; former U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Voting Rights in the United States Department of Justice Civil Division from 2014 to 2015.
Jonathan Turley — professor at the George Washington University Law School; legal analyst in broadcast and print journalism.
~ ~ ~
Twitter feeds to follow:
Marcy’s Twitter threads:
1) https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1202243842394775553
2) https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1202313357124083715
Brandi Buchman, Courthouse News: https://twitter.com/BBuchman_CNS/status/1202234420968726528
Adam Klasfeld, Courthouse News: https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1202241007800197121
Aaron Rupar, Vox: https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1202247284551016448
If you come across other journalists live tweeting this hearing, please share in comments.
~ ~ ~
Characters to watch:
GOP committee members Doug Collins, Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, and Louis Gohmert are expected to engage in the worst sorts of performance art to frustrate the hearing process. (<- my $.02 /~Rayne)
~ ~ ~
Updates to this post will appear here at the bottom.