jonathan turley is the jb and maur is sha peer oh chair of public interest law at george washington university law school where he teaches torts, criminal procedure and constitutional law. after a stint at tu lain, he joined the law faculty in 1990, in 1998 he became the youngest chaired professor in the school s history. he has written over three dozen economic law schools for a variety of leading law journals and his articles on legal and policy issues appear frequently in national publications. a chicago native, professor turley earned degrees from the university of chicago and northern western university school of law. we become all our distinguished witnesses. we thank them for participating in today s hearing. now if you would please rise, i will begin by swearing you in. do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the
witnesses have no choice but to sit there kind of uncomfortably aware of this period where they just have to sit mr. uncomfortably. and what this hearing is going to do today is it s going to try to take the facts and apply the law. but i look at turley s opening statement and he wants to talk about how mad we are. frankly, that s irrelevant, who is mad and who isn t mad. what s only relevant here is do these facts rise to the level of impeachment. now, the republicans have been saying he did nothing wrong. some would argue they should have been saying he did lots wrong, but not impeachable. but that s not what trump wants him to say. the question is, is this really normal, like turley tries to say? is this normal behavior or is this a whole nother kettle of fish? i would argue that it is a whole nother kettle of fish because we have never before in my
justice harry blackburn of the united states supreme court and is a deputy assistant attorney general of the civil rights decision in the united states department of justice where she was responsible, among other things, for reviewing the work of the department s voting. she earned three degrees from yale university, a b.a. in history, an m.a. in history and a j.d. from jail law school. michael gerhardt is the distinguished professor of jury is prudence on the center of law and government. professor gerhardt is the author of many books, including constitutional and historical analysis, as well as more than 50 law review publications on a diverse range of topics of law, federal jurisdiction and the legislative process. he received his j.d. from the university of chicago law school, his m.s. from the london school of economics and his b.a. from jail university.
concern that the president subordinate to the law and not above the law. james madison, the principal draftsman then spoke up. he said it was, quote, indispensable that some pro vig vision be made for impeachment. he said standing for re-election was, quote, not a sufficient security, closed quote, against presidential misconduct or corruption. a president he said might betray his trust to foreign powers. a president who in a corrupt fashion abused the office of the presidency, said james madison, quote, might be fatal to the republic, closed quote. and then a remarkable thing happened in the convention. governor morris of pennsylvania, one of the two people who had introduced the motion to eliminate the impeachment from the constitution, got up and said the words i was wrong. he told the other framers
whether you think that s good or bad and matches the abuse of powers is an open question. and then he goes through and argues he doesn t see what he calls a statutory crime. and we ll see that debate as well. there are people you re going to hear from who are going to say it s got to be an actual felony and then there are going to be other people pointing out the constitution doesn t require that. it has words like treason, bribery and high crimes. so we re going to get into the weeds here, but the big picture is keep your eye on which witnesses and exchanges are talking about the serious question of what s impeachable. the other noise you can try and tune out as with any hearing. mr. wiesman, your last words of advice as we settle in to watch the legal experts. i think it s very important to keep your eye on the facts and the law. and i think one of the things that the public is rightly upset about is the rule of law not being applied.