'Not how an American president should be impeached': GOP witness Jonathan Turley to launch Trump defense
by Jerry Dunleavy
December 04, 2019 1

Jonathan Turley, the lone Republican legal expert selected for Wednesday’s impeachment hearing, will condemn the Democrat-led process.

“This is not how an American president should be impeached," he will say, according to a copy of his prepared remarks obtained by the Washington Examiner.

Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, will appear in front of the House Judiciary Committee alongside three Democrat-selected witnesses in its first Ukraine-related impeachment hearing. Turley will argue in his 53-page prepared remarks that the impeachment process, led mainly by the House Intelligence Committee, has been rushed and incomplete, based on assumptions, missing key witnesses, and fueled by anger.

“I get it. You are mad. The president is mad. My Republican friends are mad. My wife is mad. My kids are mad. Even my dog is mad … and Luna is a golden doodle, and they are never mad. We are all mad, and where has it taken us?” Turley will say. “Will a slipshod impeachment make us less mad, or will it only give an invitation for the madness to follow in every future administration?”

Turley criticized Democrats, who for two years “have declared that criminal and impeachable acts were established for everything from treason to conspiracy to obstruction,” and yet “no action was taken to impeach” until “suddenly, just a few weeks ago, the House announced it would begin an impeachment inquiry and push for a final vote in just a matter of weeks.”

During the July 25 phone call that led to an August whistleblower complaint spurring the impeachment proceedings, President Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky "to do us a favor" by looking into the CrowdStrike conspiracy theory and allegations of Ukrainian election interference in 2016. Trump also urged Zelensky to investigate “the other thing,” referring to allegations of corruption related to Joe and Hunter Biden.The former vice president is the front-runner in the Democratic primary to challenge Trump in 2020.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Ukraine were held up for weeks in what Democrats call a “quid pro quo.”

Turley will note the military aid was eventually released and say the relatively small number of impeachment witnesses who spoke to the Intelligence Committee had largely second-hand information.

“The only three direct conversations with President Trump do not contain a statement of a quid pro quo, and two expressly deny such a precondition,” Turley will say. “The House has offered compelling arguments why those two calls can be discounted by the fact that President Trump had knowledge of the underlying whistleblower complaint. However, this does not change the fact that it is moving forward based on conjecture, assuming what the evidence would show if there existed the time or inclination to establish it.”

The three law experts called by Democrats — Noah Feldman of Harvard Law School, Pamela Karlan of Stanford, and Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina — are expected to argue Trump committed impeachable offenses.

Turley will say he’s not defending Trump’s actions, however. Trump’s call with Zelensky “was anything but ‘perfect,’ and his reference to the Bidens was highly inappropriate.”

"The use of military aid for a quid pro quo to investigate one’s political opponent, if proven, can be an impeachable offense,” Turley will say.

Turley will point to Democrats' failure to compel testimony from key witnesses such as former national security adviser John Bolton, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. Bolton declined an invitation to appear and was not subsequently subpoenaed; Mulvaney refused to comply with a congressional subpoena, and Democrats are moving ahead without his testimony while the case is in court. Giuliani has defied congressional subpoenas for documents, and Democrats say they don’t need his testimony to move forward with impeachment.

“This is not a case of the unknowable — it is a case of the peripheral,” Turley will say. “To impeach a president on such a record would be to expose every future president to the same type of inchoate impeachment.”

Opening Statement:

https://www.scribd.com/document/43822768...load&from_embed

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/...h-trump-defense

WATCH: Jonathan Turley’s full opening statement | Trump impeachment hearings