Professor Jonathon Turley, the lone witness for the GOP in the House impeachment hearings, disputes the White House premise that impeachment of a president requires a criminal action.
In an op-ed in the Washington Post on Tuesday, Turley wrote this about impeaching a president without a crime being committed:
While I believe that articles of impeachment are ideally based on well-defined criminal conduct, I do not believe that the criminal code is the effective limit or scope of possible impeachable offenses… The adoption of this interpretation would create lasting harm for the constitutional system.
“The White House is arguing that you cannot impeach a president without a crime. It is a view that is at odds with history and the purpose of the Constitution.”
It is Alan Dershowitz’s argument in Trump’s defense that the president committed no crime, and that charges like “abuse of power” and “obstruction of justice” are not impeachable offenses.
See also Axios.