Con Law: Three of four Constitutional law scholars who testified before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday said President Trump should be impeached.

  The dissenting voice was Jonathan Turley of Georgetown University who said the House has not collected sufficient evidence and risks acting purely on politics. He said, “I am concerned about lowering impeachment standards to fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of anger.”

  It was a daylong seminar in impeachment and Constitutional law, but also a demonstration of partisanship. The Democrats spent their time questioning the three favorable witnesses but not the lone dissenter.

  One of the central questions was whether the President’s actions had to be a crime to be impeachable. But bribery as listed in the Constitution was not a federal crime when the document was written … there were no federal laws yet. 

  Trump is accused of withholding $391 million in military aid and a White House meeting from Ukraine in exchange for an investigation of his political rival Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.

  The other three witnesses were in agreement:

• UNC-Chapel Hill law professor Michael Gerhardt: “The president’s serious misconduct, including bribery, soliciting a personal favor from a foreign leader in exchange for his exercise of power, and obstructing justice and Congress are worse than the misconduct of any prior president.”
• Harvard law professor Noah Feldman: “President Trump has committed impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors by corruptly abusing the office of the presidency.”
• Stanford law school professor Pamela S. Karlan: “Everything I know about our Constitution and its values, and my review of the evidentiary record, tells me that when President Trump invited—indeed, demanded—foreign involvement in our upcoming election, he struck at the very heart of what makes this country the ‘republic’ to which we pledge allegiance. That demand constituted an abuse of power.”

  Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler opened saying, “President Trump welcomed foreign interference in the 2016 election. He demanded it for the 2020 election. In both cases, he got caught.”

  Nadler effectively quoted Alexander Hamilton writing that the framers of the Constitution feared foreign interference in American politics and a president who defies the law: “‘When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents . . . known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion . . . [i]t may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’”

  Nadler said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the storm in which we find ourselves today was set in motion by President Trump.”

   Republicans opened from the starting gun with objections and parliamentary inquiries, attempting to delay and disrupt the hearing. Ranking member Doug Collins attacked the process, dismissed the evidence, and said, “Democrats, and their allies in the media and the permanent federal bureaucracy, are furious at the American people. They cannot abide as president a man who promised American voters he would shake up Washington.”

  Collins said, “Witnesses are allowed only when selected by Chairman Schiff to further the impeachment story and ignored when they do not,” which isn’t quite true. President Trump forbid his staff and aides from testifying and about a dozen of them complied. When Prof. Turley said the House has not questioned all the knowledgeable witnesses, he didn’t acknowledge what the Democrats say; the President has committed obstruction by refusing to cooperate.

The Hunger Games: The Trump administration is cutting off food stamps to about 700,000 people by enforcing a work requirement. The rule proposed by the Department of Agriculture in February, would make states enforce work requirements for able-bodied adults without children. The Agriculture Department says the job market has improved so much under President Trump that it’s no longer necessary to waive the work rule even in economically depressed areas. 

Jaws Drop: President Trump abruptly left the NATO summit after the release of a video revealing world leaders dissing him at a cocktail party. In the huddle were President Emmanuel Macron of France, Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Princess Anne. Trudeau can be heard saying Trump was late because he always gives a press conference at the top of an event and “You just watch his team’s jaws drop to the floor.” 

  Trump dismissed Trudeau as “two-faced.”

The Bulletin Board: Overnight a Navy sailor in Pearl Harbor who was a crewman on a nuclear submarine shot and killed two civilian workers then killed himself. It’s under investigation. — George Zimmerman, the man who infamously shot and killed the unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin eight years ago in Florida, is suing Martin’s family for $100 million claiming conspiracy, malicious prosecution, and defamation. Zimmerman, who was acquitted of criminal charges under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law. — Democratic candidate Michael Bloomberg is mounting a second wave of television advertising to air in all 50 states.

The Obit Page: Allan Gerson, the lawyer who sued Libya for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, paving the way for lawsuits against states that sponsor terror, has died at age 74.

  Gerson and lawyer Mark Zaid overcame the principle of “sovereign immunity,” which held that foreign governments were immune from lawsuits in domestic courts. In 1996 Congress passed a law granting a terrorist exception, and eventually Libya settled for $2.7 billion, about $10 million per victim.

Mad, Mad World: From law professor Jonathan Turley at the House Judiciary Committee; “The president is mad. My Democratic friends are mad. My Republican friends are mad. My wife is mad. My kids are mad. Even my dog seems mad — and Luna is a goldendoodle and they don’t get mad. So we’re all mad.”

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