Twitter and YouTube fans got a good chuckle on Wednesday when cameras captured House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) dozing off while listening to impeachment testimony, in what seemed the perfect illustration of the utterly disastrous nature of the day’s proceedings, the Daily Caller reported.
OOPS: Sleepy Jerry Nadler got caught dozing off as he chaired House Democrats’ #ImpeachmentHearing.😴💤
Sound on! 🔊🔊 pic.twitter.com/wvz9DhCuQC
— Trump War Room (Text TRUMP to 88022) (@TrumpWarRoom) December 4, 2019
The YouTube video posted by “Trump War Room” poked appropriate fun at Nadler by setting the video to a lullaby, but the fact that the person running the impeachment show could not even manage to stay awake was indicative of just how boring the hearing truly was.
Law professors testify
Wednesday’s hearings featured the testimony of three liberal law professors selected by Democrats and one non-partisan scholar, Jonathan Turley, chosen by Republicans.
Predictably, the three professors chosen by Democrats all said that President Donald Trump had indeed impeachable offenses, setting off a rush of excitement among mainstream media outlets.
“Abuse of power” seemed to be the new talking point unveiled at the hearing, since quid pro quo and bribery failed to convince enough of the American electorate to support impeachment.
But, before establishment journalists could exult too much, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Turley let much of the air out of their balloon.
Gaetz pointed out that Stanford professor Pamela Karlan had contributed thousands of dollars to the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and had been publicly declaring her staunch opposition to Trump since 2017. He then asked all of the witnesses to raise their hands if they had any direct knowledge of the material facts at issue in the impeachment inquiry — and not a single hand went up.
“This isn’t improvisational jazz”
Nadler’s opening statement made it clear that he thinks Trump is guilty even though there hasn’t been any concrete direct evidence offered to prove what Trump intended during his July 25 phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky or that his decision to temporarily withhold aid to Ukraine had anything to do with investigations of his political opponents.
Turley stated repeatedly in his testimony that the Democrats trying to impeach Trump can’t just assume the president’s motivations without any further proof.
In examining all of the previous witness testimony and the phone call transcript itself, Turley argued that there simply isn’t sufficient evidence to establish that Trump was trying to bribe Zelensky or that he withheld aid in order to prompt an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden.
“You can’t accuse the president of bribery and then say, ‘Well it’s just impeachment, we don’t have to prove the offense,’” Turley said. “This isn’t improvisational jazz. Close enough isn’t good enough. If you are going to accuse the president of bribery you need to make it stick because you are trying to remove a duly elected president of the United States.”
Not for the first time, Turley’s comments underscored the fact that Democrats really have no way to prove their allegations against Trump, but they’re going to try to ram it through anyway. And while that might be technically doable in the House, it’s all going to collapse when it gets to the trial stage in the Senate.
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