'Fast and Furious' impeachment looks like a rush to a failed case
By Jonathan Turley, opinion contributor — 12/07/19 01:00 PM EST
The day after the first House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the panel would move immediately to draft articles of impeachment, with a vote expected within two weeks. The most discussed crime is now obstruction of Congress, based on the Trump administration seeking to block witnesses. Democratic lawmakers in the hearing repeated the words of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in rejecting claims of immunity like a mantra, “Presidents are not kings.â€
The executive claim of unchecked authority filled Democratic lawmakers and witnesses with utter disgust. One witness, Harvard professor Noah Feldman, declared that Jackson “held that there is no absolute immunity which would protect a presidential adviser from having to appear before the House of Representatives and testify.†Then another witness, Stanford professor Pamela Karlan, stated, “So kings could do no wrong, because the king’s word was law, and contrary to what President Trump has said, Article Two does not give him the power to do anything he wants.â€
That is manifestly true. Indeed, another Jackson ruling went a step even further in denouncing “the proposition that the executive may assert an unreviewable right to withhold materials from the legislature†as an offense to the very foundations of our constitutional system. However, those were the words of a different Jackson, Judge Amy Berman Jackson, about a different president, Barack Obama. He withheld evidence in the “Fast and Furious†investigation of the murder of an agent with a gun supplied to criminal gangs by the federal government. Obama not only withheld witness testimony and evidence but also claimed that a court could not even review his order. While this sounds a tad monarchical, many Democratic lawmakers, including Pelosi and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, overwhelmingly supported Obama in defying Congress. There was no rush to impeach by Republicans or Democrats.
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https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/473513-fast-and-furious-impeachment-looks-like-a-rush-to-a-failed-case