Liz Cheney tweeted this:
This tells us that
- Today’s radicalized GOP, which includes those who thought Nixon should have kept fighting, will keep fighting this time, and
- The GOP will continue openly using fascist tactics.
While leaving open the possibility of interviewing more witnesses, Schiff says the Intel committee will “soon” give a report on its findings to the Judiciary Committee, the committee that is responsible for drafting articles of impeachment.
The judicial committee’s first public hearing, entitled “Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment,” is scheduled for Wed, 10 am, and will feature legal scholars discussing impeachment.
Trump and his lawyers have been invited. He has until 6:00 pm tomorrow to decide if he wants to attend Wednesday’s hearing.
Here is what they will discuss:
This is not a fact-gathering hearing.
Liz Cheney is trying to confuse and obfuscate—which is how the GOP is reacting now that they have no real defense.
(I’ll be surprised if Trump accepts. He can attack the inquiry as illegitimate more easily if he isn’t there.)
Q: What do you do when you know the scholars will explain that what Trump is accused of is impeachable?
A: Attack scholarship as a “liberal” pursuit.
According to Yale prof. Jason Stanely, author of How Fascism Works, one of the pillars of fascism is anti-intellectualism.
Fascism is opposed to intellectuals because universities (like courts) are places in pursuit of truth. Fascist ideology, in contrast, traffics in myth.
In this interview, Stanley notes that there is also a history in America of anti-intellectualism.
That’s because fascism (which features a hierarchal society) has deep roots in America:
Paxton argued that the world’s first fascist group wasn’t the Italians under Mussolini; the first fascist organization was the Ku Klux Klan, complete with a uniform and demonized enemy.
This photo was taken in New Jersey in 1937.
So it isn’t hard for Cheney to tap into fascist anti-intellectional strain in the United States. We can predict what the constitutional scholars on Wednesday will conclude.
Bonus: the books I’m about to discuss will help prepare you for the Constitutional Law portion of the Twitter Bar exam. The best overview I’ve found is Sunstein’s book:
Sunstein, a constitutional scholar, has written a very accessible account. The book contains lots of unnecessary chit-chat, so skip the preface, Chapter 1, and most of Chapter 2. Start on page 25 with “unitary executive” and read through chapter 9.
If you want an excellent and also readable historical account of the past three impeachments, see:
The legal analysis is a bit thin (no surprise) but the history and journalistic writing is fabulous. I vividly remember the Clinton impeachment and senate trial, and still Iearned much about the backstage debates and strategies.
For people with rigid ideas [If the Democrats do x, y will definitely happen] this book will expand your thinking and show you that in a process as fluid (and fraught with dangers) as this one, nobody can predict the outcome. All we can make are educated guesses.
In April, I wrote a few threads about:
You can find a few of them here and here.
I am currently reading Frank Bowman’s book, “High Crimes and Misdemeanors,” which contains much historical and in-depth legal analysis.
I’ll write an Over the Cliff Notes for Bowman’s book when I finish (before the hearing Wed) As I’ve been reading, I’ve been writing the Articles of Impeachment in my head. (me = nerd)
It might be fun for me to draft my own to see how they match up with the real ones 🙂
