Legal Expert Turley Claims Pelosi Played Right Into The Hand Of McConnell

Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School, was recently called on by the House to be a legal expert for the impeachment. He was the one legal expert that openly claimed he was not a fan of Trump.  Despite his personal feelings, Turley believed that the evidence presented by the House Dems was lacking to such an extent, that he was worried it would be setting a bad precedent to move forward with the case. But the House Dems didn’t listen and moved forward anyway. Turley has been keeping tabs on the articles of impeachment and feels that now Pelosi has further damaged her own case.

“From the outset, the ploy of Pelosi withholding the House impeachment articles was as implausible as it was hypocritical. There was no reason why Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would make concessions to get an impeachment that he loathed. More importantly, just a couple of days earlier, House leaders insisted that some of us were wrong to encourage them to wait on an impeachment vote to create a more complete record. Pelosi previously insisted that House committees could not pursue direct witnesses like former national security adviser John Bolton because there was no time to delay in getting this impeachment to the Senate. She then waited a month and counting to send the articles over to the Senate.

The delay now seems largely driven by a desire to preserve the image of Pelosi as a master strategist despite a blunder of the first order. Senator Dianne Feinstein expressed the frustration of many members in saying, “The longer it goes on, the less urgent it becomes. So if it is serious and urgent, send them over. If it is not, do not send it over.” But she and other members were quickly pressured to “correct” their earlier statements by stating the exact opposite and praising the brilliant strategy of Pelosi.”

“The fact is that Pelosi played into the hands of McConnell by first rushing this impeachment forward with an incomplete record and now giving him the excuse to summarily change the rules, or even to dismiss the articles. Waiting for the House to submit a list of managers was always a courtesy extended by Senate rules and not a requirement of the Constitution. By inappropriately withholding the articles of impeachment and breaking with tradition, Pelosi simply gave McConnell ample reason to exercise the “nuclear option” and change the rules on both majority voting as well as the rule for the start of trials. That is a high price to pay for vanity.

It could get even worse for the House case. I previously discussed that the Senate had an excuse to simply declare that a trial will start next week and either the House will appear with a team of managers or the case will be summarily dismi*ssed. McConnell is now moving toward a summary vote in the Senate, in light of the House failing to comply with its own procedural obligations. That is what happens when prosecutors defy a court and fail to appear for a trial. It is known as “dismissal for want of prosecution.”

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House Dems did this to themselves, they should never have gone after Trump in the first place. The whole case was more about emotions than evidence. The fact that Pelosi was trying to hold the articles hostage makes it seem like she knew she didn’t have a case either. So hopefully the Senate will end this ridiculous impeachment attempt and stop harassing Trump.