The House Judiciary Committee’s GOP witness during Wednesday’s impeachment hearing, claims he was inundated with threatening messages after his testimony.
George Washington University law professor, Jonathan Turley tweeted that he had been inundated with threatening messages after testifying against impeaching President Trump.
His tweet also linked to an op-ed he wrote for The Hill in which he discussed the attacks he faced since his testimony earlier this week.
My call for greater civility and dialogue may have been the least successful argument I made to the committee. Before I finished my testimony, my home and office were inundated with threatening messages and demands that I be fired from GW. https://t.co/X3wsqPTZBj
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) December 5, 2019
“In my testimony Wednesday, I lamented that, as in the impeachment of President Clinton from 1998 to 1999, there is an intense ‘rancor and rage’ and ‘stifling intolerance’ that blinds people to opposing views,” he wrote. “My call for greater civility and dialogue may have been the least successful argument I made to the committee. Before I finished my testimony, my home and office were inundated with threatening messages and demands that I be fired from George Washington University for arguing that, while a case for impeachment can be made, it has not been made on this record.”
At Wednesday’s hearing, Turley said in his opening remarks that the Democrats’ efforts to impeach the president were “woefully inadequate” and “dangerous.”
“One can oppose President Trump’s policies or actions but still conclude that the current legal case for impeachment is not just woefully inadequate, but in some respects, dangerous, as the basis for the impeachment of an American president,” he said.
Turley said he was concerned about “lowering impeachment standards to fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of anger.”
“If the House proceeds solely on the Ukrainian allegations, this impeachment would stand out among modern impeachments as the shortest proceeding, with the thinnest evidentiary record, and the narrowest grounds ever used to impeach a president,” he said.
“If we are to impeach a president for only the third time in our history, we will need to rise above this age of rage and genuinely engage in a civil and substantive discussion.”
Watch Turley’s opening statement at the House Judiciary Committee hearing on Dec 4:
