Law prof Jonathan Turley: GOP witness at Trump impeachment hearing raised on Chicago’s North Side

WASHINGTON — Raised on Chicago’s North Side, Jonathan Turley, a law professor who was the only GOP witness at the first House Judiciary Trump impeachment hearing Wednesday, declined to join Republicans who called the proceedings a sham.

Turley — a familiar face to those who watch political TV — said the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump was “woefully inadequate” but added — and this is important — the Trump-Ukraine call on July 25 that Trump keeps calling “perfect” was “anything but perfect.”

In other words, Turley called strikes for both sides.

Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, was one of four legal scholars who testified in a long and, at times, contentious hearing Democrats hoped would lay a foundation for pursuing Trump.

ABOUT JONATHAN TURLEY

Turley is a Washington figure, well known in legal and journalism circles, whose roots are in Chicago. We chatted about his Chicago ties during a break in the hearing and afterwards.

His parents moved to Chicago from Florida so that his father could study architecture under the famed Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

As a youth, his family lived for a time at the Paddington on Irving Park Road a few blocks from Lake Shore Drive. “We grew up there,” he said, before moving to a house on the 4200 block on North Hazel Street.

He attended elementary school at Brennemann; spent a few years at the old Quigley North Seminary; and graduated high school from the Latin School of Chicago. After that, Turley picked up his undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago and a law degree from Northwestern University.

He thought his mother, Angela, who still lives on the North Side, was watching Wednesday.

The Democrats gave themselves three witnesses and allowed the GOP one, Turley.

He reprised a role he had in 1998, when he testified before the House Judiciary Committee as it was poised to impeach Bill Clinton for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Turley saw no reason not to proceed back then, a contrast to Wednesday, when he urged lawmakers to keep digging.

The House Intelligence Committee, after hearings and other investigations, produced a 300-page report Tuesday concluding Trump engaged in an “unprecedented campaign” to prevent Congress from getting to the bottom of his pressure campaign on Ukraine, where he “compromised national security” for his own benefit.

Turley argued that going ahead with impeachment right now was premature because there was more to investigate. The problem has been that Trump has been stonewalling, not allowing key witnesses to testify and not producing documents.

“The current legal case for impeachment is not just woefully inadequate but in some respects dangerous as the basis for impeachment of an American president,” Turley said.

Turley added that the Trump impeachment is “not wrong because President Trump is right. His call was anything but perfect. It is not wrong because the House has no legitimate reason to investigate the Ukrainian controversy. It is not wrong because we are in an election year. There is no good time for an impeachment.

“No, it is wrong because this is not how you impeach an American president. This case is not a case of the unknowable; it is a case of the peripheral. We have a record of conflicts, defenses that have not been fully considered, unsubpoenaed witness with material evidence.”

He didn’t name names.

Said Turley as the hearing was winding down, “if you are going to remove a president, if you believe in democracy, if you were going to remove a sitting president then you have an obligation not to rely on inference when there is still information you could gather. And that is what I am saying.

“It is not that you can’t do this — you just can’t do it this way.”

The main witness Trump and the GOP members want, however, is the whistleblower whose concerns about Trump and Ukraine fueled Democrats going forward with impeachment. We learned at the hearing that Trump is the only president not to cooperate in an impeachment proceeding. Turley gave Republicans cover in arguing the probe is incomplete. But a stonewalling Trump should not be immune to impeachment.