For the opening day of House impeachment proceedings before the Judiciary Committee, four legal scholars have been called in to testify concerning the the history, intent, and importance of impeachment. Those witnesses are:
Noah Feldman, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
Pamela Karlan, a professor at Stanford Law School and constitutional expert for PBS.
Michael Gerhardt, the Samuel Ashe Distinguished Professor of Constitutional Law at UNC.
Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington Law School and a familiar face on television.
As with the public hearings before the House Intelligence Committee, there will be opening statements, one or more rounds of questioning by staff, and then five minutes offered to each member of the committee.
Wednesday, Dec 4, 2019 · 10:00:50 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Republican Rep. Debbie Lesko may not have matched Gaetz and Gohmert for sheer incoherent rambling, but she’s doing a fine job in showing the limits of simply ignoring the witnesses, the evidence, and everything else to simply announce her scorn.
Lesko then wanders into trying to defend Trump by explaining how he actually pressed for the “crowdstrike” conspiracy theory before he asked about the Bidens. Sure. Let’s go there.
Wednesday, Dec 4, 2019 · 10:19:17 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Rep. Val Demings does a fine job of walking through the case again and getting confirmation on every step.
Then Republican Ben Cline gives a fine example of how Republicans have spent the day on mindless crap. What have we heard today? They chairs aren’t comfortable. It’s too cold. Now the wrong pictures are on the wall. You have to feel for people who are … this sorry.
Wednesday, Dec 4, 2019 · 10:50:53 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Rep. Lucy McBath returning to the intimidation toward Yovanovitch. As often seems to happen, some of these last Democratic Reps to question the witnesses seem to hit aspects that need to be highlighted and often do a better job of coordinating their questions with other reps. If only this extended to the whole committee.
Wednesday, Dec 4, 2019 · 10:56:03 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner
Karlan apologizes for invoking Barron Trump’s name as part of a pun on Trump’s power — but since that came immediately after testimony about the effort Trump went through to demean and threaten public servants, it’s not exactly Karlan who comes off poorly.