Legal Scholars Have Weighed In. Now Nancy Pelosi Calls For Articles Of Impeachment.

Points of disagreement among legal scholars who testified at Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearings come down to how quickly the House should move forward.

By Rhonda Fanning & Jill AmentDecember 5, 2019 1:35 pm

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Thursday that she is asking the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee to begin drafting articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. This comes after a committee hearing on Wednesday when constitutional law scholars made their cases for and against moving forward with impeachment.

Lynne Rambo specializes in constitutional law at the Texas A&M School of Law in Fort Worth, and says the three experts who made the case for articles of impeachment presented convincing arguments, in line with what Democrats wanted to hear.

“Whenever you have a party in charge of a particular house [of Congress], they get to constitute more of the committees, they get to lead the agenda,” Rambo says.

Rambo says she found Stanford law professor Pamela Karlan’s comments about U.S. military aid to Ukraine compelling. Karlan said that if aid to disaster areas affected by Hurricanes Harvey or Katrina had been tied to attacking a political opponent, “We would all know that was impeachable conduct.”

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who was invited to Wednesday’s hearing by Republican members of the Judiciary Committee, suggested a “go slow” approach to impeachment, Rambo says.

“He also felt as though there was some confusion on the part of the Democratic witnesses as to whether or not this was the crime of bribery, or whether it was abuse of power,” Rambo says.

All who testified agreed that impeachment is an important issue, requiring due consideration from Congress. Rambo says it’s possible members of the House are more concerned about the issue than the American people.

“I just think that the level of cynicism has somehow enveloped the American people – that is very, very unfortunate, and needs to change,” she says. “We need to do something to make sure all of our citizens are voting. We need to make sure that all of our citizens are not feeling disillusioned by the political process.”

 

Written by Shelly Brisbin.