By: Fred Lucas – dailysignal.com – December 04, 2019

The House Judiciary Committee, holding its first day of impeachment hearings Wednesday, heard from four legal scholars on the case for and against removing President Donald Trump from office less than a year before a presidential election.

After five days of public hearings over two weeks, the House Intelligence Committee submitted its report—contested by the panel’s Republicans—to the Judiciary Committee, which will make the final determination on drafting and adopting articles of impeachment.

“We are all aware that the next election is looming. But we cannot wait for the next election to address the present crisis,” Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said in his opening remarks. “The integrity of that election is one of the very things at stake. The president has shown us his pattern of conduct. If we do not act to keep him in check now, President Trump will almost certainly try again.”

The Intelligence Committee report, and its key witnesses, promotes a case of bribery, abuse of power, and obstruction of justice against Trump based on his July 25 phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

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During the call, the two leaders talked about Trump’s interest in investigating Ukraine’s alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election as well as the Ukraine-related actions of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, who had a lucrative position on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

Democrats called three law professors as witnesses Wednesday, and generally asked questions of them only about their conclusion that Trump committed impeachable offenses. Republicans had a single witness, a fourth law professor who warned lawmakers that they hadn’t made the case for impeachment.

Here are six takeaways from the Judiciary Committee hearing, which lasted more than seven hours.

1. ‘Tears in Brooklyn’

The Trump impeachment effort ultimately dates back to Democrats’ sour grapes about losing an election, Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., the committee’s ranking member, said in opening remarks.

“This is not an impeachment. This is just a simple railroad job, and today’s is a waste of time,” Collins said.

Collins responded to Nadler’s mention earlier of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign. The report determined that neither Trump nor his campaign conspired with the Russian government or Russian operatives. However, it didn’t determine that Trump obstructed justice.

Collins said the previous investigations, or the current one, hardly matter to those motivated to remove Trump without an election.

“This didn’t start with Mueller,” Collins said. “This didn’t start with a phone call. This started with tears in Brooklyn in November of 2016 when an election was lost.”

The reference was to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters in Brooklyn.

2. ‘Safeguards Against Establishing a Monarchy’

Michael Gerhardt, a law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law, testified that he was fearful that not impeaching Trump would raise the bar too high for future impeachments.

“I just want to stress—if what we’re talking about is not impeachable, then nothing is impeachable,” Gerhardt told the committee.

“The record compiled thus far shows the president has committed several impeachable offenses, including bribery, abuse of power, and soliciting of personal favor from a foreign leader to benefit himself personally, obstructing justice, and obstructing Congress,” Gerhardt said.

At the time of the July phone call, Trump had placed a hold on nearly $400 million in congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine, although Zelenskyy did not know this. Nor did the men refer specifically to the status of that aid in their conversation, according to the official White House transcript.

Zelenskyy has said repeatedly that he did not feel pressured by Trump to open investigations.

Gerhardt went on to talk about a monarchy.

“I cannot help but conclude that this president has attacked each of the Constitution’s safeguards against establishing a monarchy in this country,” Gerhardt said, adding: “If Congress fails to impeach here, then the impeachment process has lost all meaning, and, along with that, our Constitution’s carefully crafted safeguards against the establishment of a king on American soil.”

Another witness, Stanford University law professor Pamela Karlan, later joked about Trump’s seeking to be royal and invoked the name of his 13-year-old son.

“The Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility. So, while the president can name his son Barron, he cannot make him a baron,” Karlan said, to some laughter.

First lady Melania Trump took exception to this crack in a tweet.

Sometime later, Karlan said during the hearing: “I want to apologize for what I said earlier about the president’s son. It was wrong of me to do that. I wish the president would apologize, obviously, for the things that he’s done that are wrong. But I do regret having said that.”

 3. ‘We Are All Mad’

A bigger concern is lowering the standard of impeachment to meet the anger of the moment, testified Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University.

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Source: 6 Big Moments as Second Round of Impeachment Hearings Begins