The Republican's Star Impeachment Scholar Is a Shameless Hack

[babylonsister]

https://www.thenation.com/article/turley-impeachment-hypocrisy/


The Republican’s Star Impeachment Scholar Is a Shameless Hack
Jonathan Turley’s testimony was so inconsistent, it contradicted his own previous statements on impeachment.
By Elie Mystal
Today 10:47 am

snip//

The fourth professor, requested by Republicans on the committee, was Jonathan Turley from George Washington University Law School. Republicans know that all they have to do to outflank the Democrats is serve up talking points Sean Hannity can use on his show. They tapped Turley to do the easy work of poisoning the well with more misinformation.

Turley did not disappoint. He told Republicans what they wanted to hear right from his opening statement:

“I’m concerned about lowering impeachment standard to fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of anger. I believe this impeachment not only fails to satisfy the standard of past impeachments, but would create a dangerous precedent for future impeachments…. This would be the first impeachment in history where there would be considerable debate, and in my view, not compelling evidence, of the commission of a crime.”

Turley beclowned himself with his remarks, because this is not the first time Jonathan Turley has testified about impeachment. In 1998, testifying in front of the House Judiciary Committee during the Clinton impeachment hearing, Turley said, “No matter how you feel about President Clinton, no matter how you feel about the independent counsel, by his own conduct, he has deprived himself of the perceived legitimacy to govern. You need both political and legal legitimacy to govern this nation, because the President must be able to demand an absolute sacrifice from the public at a moment’s notice.”

It’s impossible to explain the shameless hypocrisy of Turley’s conflicting statements without concluding that his testimony, in both hearings, was offered in bad faith. Can Turley really expect us to believe that he would support impeachment if Trump lied about what he got on Volodymyr Zelensky’s blue dress, but would also support Bill Clinton’s right to extort a foreign power to influence an American election? Turley can’t square his Trump testimony with his Clinton testimony; all he can hope for is that people are too polite to call him a hypocrite to his face.

Jonathan Turley is punking us. The only dangerous lowering of standards we saw at the hearing was the smuggling of Jonathan Turley onto a panel of experts, the rest of whom were able to testify with academic integrity.

snip//

You don’t need a law degree to know that everything Jonathan Turley said yesterday was drenched in his own hypocrisy. His testimony was an attempt to distract and dissemble, offered at the behest of the Republican Party, which tapped him likely because it couldn’t find a legal scholar with less partisan baggage to make the same bad-faith arguments. Ken Starr or Jeanine Pirro would have been too obvious for the Republicans’ purposes; Turley’s the hack they call when they don’t want to look like they’re calling in a hack.

[Midnight Writer]

1. "Shameless Hack" is the dictionary definition of "Republican Scholar".

The country will be paying for the hackery of "economist" Lawrence Laffer forever, and he is still getting awards.

[Wounded Bear]

3. Republican scholar is an oxymoron...

Shameless hack isn't.

Just sayin'

[Wellstone ruled]

2. As long as the Talent Fee Check clears the Bank,

hey,he will say and repeat any message worth the money.

[keithbvadu2]

9. Talent-free?

[Wellstone ruled]

11. When ever he appears on any

Network Talk Show he is paid a Talent fee. Yesterday was a freebe.

[The Wizard]

4. How much did he get paid to prostitute

his name for the Siberian Candidate?

[Ponietz]

5. Along much the same lines:

[link:https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/04/no-wonder-jonathan-turleys-dog-is-mad/|

[Mr.Bill]

17. I'm sure there are many competant Costitutional Law experts who are

conservative republicans out there. The fact that they had to bring a hack like Turley to something as important as an impeachment hearing to be their mouthpiece states volumes about how few people are willing to participate in the shitshow that the republican congress has become.

[Hortensis]

6. Yup. Turley's opening schtick was that both parties had become

so dysfunctionally "enraged" (ENORMOUS false equalization) that it's come to the point that one of them, the Democrats, have abandoned duty, integrity, even decency to actually try to impeach -- even though our case is "wafer-thin," Democrats lack "limiting principles," we're treating impeachment like "impulse-buy Nike sneakers," and Trump's actions were "inappropriate" but not impeachable.

And coming after the excellent and highly principled constitutional scholars my favorite, his emphatic: "It's wrong because that's not how you impeach an American president." "That" being a list of ways Democrats are avoiding justice to railroad the impeachment. It's on PBS's Republican-lie-serving YouTube video of Turley's closing remarks.

[They_Live]

15. what a load

of crap.

[Hortensis]

20. Grade triple C. We tried CBS's evening news

With Nora O’Donnell tonight, and it was an enormous improvement over what it used to be. The show moves every segment along very fast so they get a lot of news information in.

[smirkymonkey]

7. Republican scholar?

Is that kind of like "Right-wing think tank"?

What a joke!

[Baitball Blogger]

8. He talked like a guy who makes his living

Dumbing down the law for right-wing media. Like he plays an academic on tv.

[world wide wally]

10. Now, if a blowjob was involved... That is an altogether different matter.

[spanone]

12. K&R...👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

[Leith]

13. He fits in with the rest of the rat nest

They probably gave him a script which he read happily.

[Mr.Bill]

14. Rachel Maddow took him apart on her show last night.

Totally exposed him and showed video of Adam Schiff kicking his ass during an impeachment hearing for a judge ten years ago. Turley was the defense lawyer for the judge and lost big time.

[paleotn]

16. Sorry, this is going to seem overly harsh...but...

I hate all Republicans with the heat of a thousand suns!

[certainot]

18. liimbaugh read a short email he claimed was real which said a lot of what is said here

with a little more force but no real threat, supposedly written by a student at GW.

along with attacks on the other witnesses and 3 years of attacks on the 'deep state' and all the investigators, he was basically saying to the dittoheads "so what are you going to do about it?"

[Botany]

19. "to fit a paucity of evidence"

The evidence is overwhelming. End of story.