GOP Witness Turley Says Don’t Impeach Trump Because Everyone, Including His Labradoodle, Is Mad

Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley argued against impeaching President Donald Trump because everybody, including his own dog, is just too “mad” about stuff, and because the record of Trump’s offenses is too “incomplete.”

On Wednesday, Turley appeared as a GOP witness at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Trump’s impeachment, and included an extended riff about the mad-ness of everyone involved, and everyone not involved.

“We are living in the very period described by Alexander Hamilton, a period of agitated passions,” Turley said, then disappointed the entire world by failing to describe how he would not be throwing away his shot.

Instead, he delivered a patronizing and illogical rant about those passions.

“I get it,” Turley began. “You’re mad. The president’s mad. My Republican friends are mad, my Democratic friends are mad. My wife is mad. My kids are mad. Even my dog seems mad, and Luna is a golden doodle and they don’t get mad. So we’re all mad.”

“Where has that taken us?” he asked, and added “Will a slipshod impeachment make us less mad? Will it only invite an invitation for the madness to follow every future administration?”

“That is why this is wrong,” Turley continued. “It’s not wrong because President Trump is right, his call was anything but perfect. It’s not wrong because the House has no legitimate reason to investigate the Ukrainian controversy, it’s not wrong because we are in an election year, there is no good time for an impeachment. No, it’s wrong because this is not how you impeach an American president.”

“This case is not a case of the unknowable, it’s a case of the peripheral. We have a record of conflicts, defenses that have not been fully considered, on unsubpoenaed witnesses with material evidence. To impeach your president on this record would expose every future president to the same type of incoherent impeachment,” he said, then continued on like that for a few more minutes.

But Turley’s argument ignores a body of facts that includes the complete obstruction of Congress by the Trump White House that is in large part responsible for the incomplete record that Turley describes, and an extortion plot that used taxpayer aid to a desperate ally as a means of extracting a personal political favor to influence our next election.

The record is incomplete because of Trump, and Trump is mad because he got caught. I would suggest that if Turley’s dog is mad, it’s because she’s paying attention.

Watch the clip above, via CNN.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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