Law professor Pamela Karlan offered legal advice to the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. In her opening statement in the impeachment hearings that began before the committee, Karlan said that she was not there to cater to anyone’s political talking points. She continued to dismantle every obfuscating talking point Republicans have been using to gaslight the country into forgetting what is actually at stake during the proceedings.
During one exchange, Karlan asked if she could explain what about Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s impeachment hearing testimony was most alarming and damning. She pointed to Sondland explaining that Trump’s release of aid to Ukraine was based very obviously on hurting a political opponent and not at all on the general existential threat of corruption in Ukraine. “He had to announce the investigations, he didn’t actually have to do them, as I understood it,” Sondland had testified.
It’s obvious fact, but it is important to draw it out in hopes that maybe one unconvinced person will realize why this is not a partisan use of the impeachment process.
KARLAN: If I can say one last thing about the interests of the United States: The Constitution of the United States does not care whether the next president of the United States is Donald J. Trump or any one of the Democrats or anybody running on a third party. The Constitution is indifferent to that. What the Constitution cares about is that we have free elections. And so, it is only in the president's interest, it's not the national interest that a particular president be elected or be defeated at the next election. The Constitution is indifferent to that.
And that’s a fact.