Somebody caught in the middle of it, and that does not excuse the person from the consequences. Professors, we have talked about abuse of power and bribery when we started, we said we would also discuss obstruction of congress. So i would like to ask you some questions about obstruction of congress. Professor gerhardt, in your view, is there enough evidence here to charge President Trump with a high crime and misdemeanor of obstruction of congress . I think that there is more than enough. As i mentioned in my statement, i just really underscore this. The third article of impeachment, approved by the House Judiciary Committee against president nixon charged him with misconduct that he failed to comply with four legislative subpoenas. This is far more than four that this president has failed to comply with. And he has ordered the executive
branch, as well, not to cooperate with congress. Those together with a lot of other evidence suggests obstruction of congress. Professor karlan, do you agree . I am the discuss her of democracy, as a citizen i agree with what professor gerhardt. I am a scholar of the law of democracy, not a scholar of Obstruction Of Justice or obstruction of congress. We will accept your opinion as a citizen. Professor feldman. The obstruction of congress is a problem because it undermines the basic principle of the constitution. If youre going to have three branches of government, each of the branches have to do its job. The job of the houses to investigate impeachment, and to impeach. The president has had as the president did say, i will not cooperate in any shape, or form of your process. Robbed a form of government. Robbing the House Of Representatives of their constitutional power of impeachment. When you add to the fact that the same president says my Department Of Justice cannot charge me with the crime, the president puts himself Above The Law when he says he will not cooperate in impeachment inqui inquiry. It is not positive enough. A president who will not cooperate in an Impeachment Inquiry is putting himself Above The Law. Putting yourself Above The Law as president is the core of an Impeachable Offense. Because if the president could not be impeached for that, he would in fact not be responsible to anybody. Answer, informing your opinion, did you review these statements from President Trump . We are fighting all of the subpoenas. Then i have an article 2 where i have the right to do whatever i want as president. I did, and as someone who cares about the constitution,
the second of those in particular struck a kind of horror in me. And professor gerhardt, informing your opinion that President Trump has committed the Impeachable Offense of obstruction of congress, did you consider the Intelligence Committee report and its findings including finding nine that President Trump ordered and implemented a campaign to conceal his conduct from the public and to frustrate and obstruct the House Of RepresentativesImpeachment Inquiry. Last night after i submitted my statement, i watched and read all of the transcripts that were available. The report to that was issued reinforces everything that came before it. So yes. We have talked first to the power of bribery. And to congress. Professor gerhardt, i would like to ask you some questions about a third Impeachable Offense, and that is Obstruction Of Justice. Sir, have you formed an opinion as to whether President Trump committed the Impeachable Offense of Obstruction Of Justice . Yes, i have. And what is your opinion, sir . Ive come here like every other witness assuming the facts that have been put together in official reports. The Mueller Report cites a number of facts that indicate the president of the United States obstructed justice. That is an Impeachable Offense. In your testimony, sir, you pointed out that to the Mueller Report found at least five instances of the president s obstruction of the justice departments criminal investigation into russian interference in the 2016 election, correct . Yes. The first of those instances
was the president ordering his then white House Counsel dom began to fire the special counsel rather than to have the special counsel fired in order to thwart the investigation of the president , correct . That is correct. The second was a president ordering mr. Mcgann to create a false written record denying that the president had ordered him to have mr. Mueller remove. That is correct. You also point to the meeting of the president with his former Campaign Manager corey lewandowski, in order to get him to take steps to have the investigation curtailed, right . Yes, sir, i did. And you also point to part in dangling and witness and tingling as the Michael Cohen former official and former lawyer of the president. Individually and collectively these are forms of Obstruction Of Justice. Is that Obstruction Of Justice . It is quite serious, and that is not all, of course. We know as you have mentioned before, Obstruction Of Justice as we recognize an Impeachable Offense in president clinton and president nixon. The evidence put forward by mr. Mueller that is in the Public Record is very strong evidence of Obstruction Of Justice. Professor karlan, when you look at the Department Of JusticeRussian Investigation and how the president responded to that, and when you look at congress, Ukraine Investigation and how the president responded to that, do you see a pattern . Yes, i see a pattern in which the president s views about the propriety of foreign governments intervening in our election process are the antithesis of what our framers were committed to. Our framers were committed to the idea that we as americans,
we as americans decide our elections. We dont want foreign interference in those elections. In the reason we dont want foreign interference in those elections is because we are a self determining democracy. If i could just read one quotation to you that i think is helpful in understanding this. It is somebody who is pointing to what he calls a straightforward principle. It is fundamental to the definition of our National Political community that foreign citizens do not have a constitutional right to participate in and thus may be excluded from activities of democratic selfgovernment. And the person who wrote those words is now Justice Brett kavanaugh in upholding the constitutionality of a federal statute that denies foreign citizens the right to participate in our elections by spending money on election hearing, or by giving money to tax. They have long been forbidden to give contributions to candidates. And the reason is because that
denies us our right to self govern. And then judge Justice Brett kavanaugh was so correct in seeing this at the Supreme Court, which as you know has taking Campaign Finance after case to talk about the first amendment. It is constitutional, and part of the election process. Professor feldman, you were an Impeachment Skeptic at the time of the release of the Mueller Report, were you . I was. What has changed for you, sir . What changed was the revelation of the July 25th Call and the evidence that emerged subsequently of the president of the United States in a format where he was heard by others and now known to a whole public, openly abused his office by seeking a personal advantage in order to get himself reelected at the National Security of theUnited States, that is precisely the situation that the framers anticipated. It is very unusual for the framers predictions to come true that precisely. And when they do, we have to ask ourselves, someday we will no longer be alive. And we will go wherever it is we go. The good place or the other place. And we may meet there, madison and hamilton, and they will ask us when the president of the United States acted to corrupt the structure of the republic, what did you do . And our answer to that question must be that we follow the guidance of the framers. And it must be that if the evidence supports the conclusion that the House Of Representatives moves to impeach him. Thank you, i yield my time back to the chairman. My time has expired, i yield back. Before i recognized low Ranking Member for his ground, first round of questions, the committee will stand in a ten minute humanitarian recess. I ask everyone in the room to please remain seated and quiet while the witnesses exit the room. I also want to announce to those in the audience that you may not be guaranteed to your seat if you leave the hearing room at this time. And once the witnesses have left the hearing room, at this time the committee will stand in a short recess. For the past 45 minutes you have been hearing the case made on behalf of democrats in the house about the trifecta of offenses committed by the president. Abuse of power, bribery, Obstruction Of Justice. Three of the four witnesses agreeing with all of those charges and laying out in detail sometimes in passionate detail as to why they believe in this case the president is guilty. With one exception, Jonathan Turley sitting on the end to field the fewest questions of the session. Michael gerhardt, this stuck out that this is not impeachable, then nothing is impeachable,
sitting next to turley, professor of George Washington university who has the opposite view of the facts before them. Lets bring in our roundtable. We are stacked up today. I want to get to Andy Mccarthy first and find out. These are not Fact Witnesses, andy, they are offering what you could argue, their legal opinion as to what they believe the case is. How effective was this morning session . I think it has been very effective so far for the democrats. And in an interesting way. I sense that there is a real shift in strategy, what we saw in the Intelligence Committee hearings was that the democratic majority seemed to settle on bribery as its main theory for impeachment. But it is very interesting the way that this tees up today, because historically before you call in the legal experts, usually have drafted up the
articles of impeachment and asked the legal experts than to explain how they square with what the framers had in mind in the Impeachment Clauses. Interestingly, here we dont have articles of impeachment yet. And what you are seeing is a shift in the approach from bribery to something that is more is more a more for us. But fits under the constitutions definition. And that is abuse of power. The whole idea of exercising Public Authority for a private gain, and in particular in a manner that could have a detrimental effect on our elections. Which the framers were concerned about. What i think is happening as these witnesses are being used not only as if they were a Fact Witnesses, but if they were a crucial Fact Witnesses paid what is happening here is they are laying out the definition, as it
were of what an abuse of power is, and what is suddenly happening as it goes on. As they are taking statements of the adam Schiff Report that came out of that Intelligence Committee and asking, how does that fit into what you just told us about abuse of power . And what i think is this is ultimately setting up to our articles of impeachment that are not necessarily or predominantly criminal offenses. But abuses of power along the lines of what the Law Professors have laid out. Bill andy, thank you. I want to go around the horn with more now. Bret baier, theyre a lot to take away of what we have seen in the hearing room, one was jonathan were turley, the republican witness getting some statements out of the way. In page 4, he got to it in his abbreviated statement. Im not a supporter of the president , i voted against him in 2016. He previously voted for president clinton and obama. He pointed that he has been very
critical of President Trump, but he went on to say why he believes impeachment is wrong. Here is Jonathan Turley. That is why this is wrong. It is not wrong because President Trump is right. His call as anything but perfect. It is not wrong because the house hasnt no legitimate reason to investigate the ukrainian controversy. It is not wrong because we are in an election year. There is no good time for an impeachment. No, it is wrong because this is not how you impeach an american president. Your take away so far . I think that Jonathan Turley laid out why he does not think that this fits. You also heard some of the attempts by all of the witnesses and some Law Professors, golden doodles being upset and the like. I think it all came down to laying out to this case. Democrats obviously talking to the first three witnesses. And an impassioned moment between professor pamela karlan
and doug collins, the Ranking Member of the committee, collins and his Opening Statement essentially said that they are not going to provide anything that they did not already know. And they dont know all of the witnesses what they have said. Karlan pushing back saying she was offended that she went over every witness statement. But says that it all comes down to the clock on the calendar for the democrats and it all started with tears in brooklyn. Meaning the end of the 2016 election where Hillary Clinton lost. I think you are going to see republicans as the white house put out statements all throughout the three democratic witness testimony. You are going see efforts to kind of undermine their testimony because of what they alleged the white house and others is biased and specific evidence for each one of them where they have talked out about President Trump months and months ago and expect that to be the blueprint as a republican start their questions. Sandra it appears the
press secretary Stephanie Grisham has just put out a tweet during all of this thing three of the four experts in the sham hearing have known biases against the president. A multipart tweet, but the white house is reacting. Spilling more now from turley talking about Alexander Hamilton, saying we are living in a period of agitated passions. Talking about how everybody is mad paired his wife, his kids, his dog. Mad in washington, and what you think we have learned, chris . Lets just talk about Jonathan Turley for a moment. Because there were four very distinguished Law Professors who express their views. And then the democrats and the majority counsel norm eiseman had 45 minutes. If you notice, he talked at three of them for about 34 minutes and 30 seconds. And only once did he ask Jonathan Turley any questions. Then he asked him about a specific quote that he had given in an article, and he said, he
read the article and the quote and said, did you say that . Which was critical of President Trump and one of the things that turley said was that it does not have to be completed for something to be an impeachable crime. And turley started to give an answer, no, no, i just want to know yes or no, did you say that . He said he read it accurately. Why are you talking to the three and not the other, the democrats who have the majority called three democratic protrump impeachment Law Professors. And they wanted to focus on them. They did not want to hear anything from Jonathan