Jonathan Turley, Republicans Find Ideal ‘Impartial’ Witness for Trump

[dukkha]

George Washington University’s Jonathan Turley, an outspokenly non-partisan and Trump-skeptic expert who nonetheless in every significant particular reinforced their claim that Trump’s being railroaded toward impeachment via a hasty partisan effort based on evidence falling far short of constitutional standards for removing a president.

In other words, Turley was the perfect witness to appeal to self-styled political independents and putative 2020 swing voters who might approach this entire controversy with a plague-on-both-your-houses attitude. He wisely fell silent when Republican questioners retailed their own conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden or other nefarious Democrats.

Now if you read or listened to his words closely, it became apparent he differed from the other witnesses — and from the weight of opinion in constitutional law circles — not just on Trump’s impeachment but on all sort of fundamental issues.
Unlike the others, he thinks presidents cannot obstruct Congress — or even obstruct justice — unless they defy judicial orders (unfortunately, federal judges typically refuse to police executive-legislative disputes, particularly those involving impeachment, as “political questions”).
Unlike the others, he believes the constitutional standards for “bribery” track later criminal statutory definitions.
And unlike the others, he would limit impeachments to situations where such criminal statutes are violated.

He also made it reasonably clear that he felt Bill Clinton was properly impeached, and that Andrew Johnson was “railroaded” much like Trump; Nixon, he feels, deserved impeachment but not on the obstruction of justice grounds that might provide a precedent for impeaching Trump.
And above all, he stressed that legitimate and politically-sustainable impeachments require a lot of time (“saturation and maturation,” as he put it).
As of this writing, he hasn’t addressed the question of how an alleged effort to rig an impending election can be addressed at the requisite leisurely pace, but Turley is clearly on board with the bedrock GOP argument that this impeachment proceeding is by definition illegitimate because it is happening so quickly.

So he is in an excellent position to give “non-partisan” credibility to the intensely partisan — by his own accounting — Republicans he is materially assisting.
He reminds me a lot of David Brooks and other center-right pundits who profess disdain for partisans — equal disdain, regardless of the facts in any particular case — but who happen more often than not to come down on the side of whatever the GOP wants at any given moment.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/...p-witness.html

[dukkha]

it's almost impossible to find a good article - even this is full of Trump hate - but at least it hits the salient points of Turlys testimony

[dukkha]

Unlike the others, he thinks presidents cannot obstruct Congress — or even obstruct justice — unless they defy judicial orders

if you look at Obstruction as a Contempt of Congress ( which I do) then you need to have a court order
out there that POTUS violates with his "obstruction" else it's just basic separation of powers conflict

Unlike the others, he believes the constitutional standards for “bribery” track later criminal statutory definitions.

the key idea that the text of the Constituition does refer to actual crimes.
Where enumerated the crimes have to meet the statutory standards described.

And unlike the others, he would limit impeachments to situations where such criminal statutes are violated.

bingo "High crimes and Misdemeanors"
Turly fudged that with the popular "Impeachment is what we say it is" but the TEXT is clear and the TEXT
is the final say on impeachable standards.

Unlike "Abuse of power" which is just a political POV = not impeachable