Former CIA analyst Fred Fleitz on Wednesday praised House impeachment testimony by George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley against the impeachment of President Donald Trump because "the usual left-wing suspects are attacking him on Twitter."
"You know, @JonathanTurley's testimony was effective, since the usual left-wing suspects are attacking him on Twitter," Fleitz, who also worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department, tweeted. "He was especially effective since he noted he voted against @realDonaldTrump."
Turley was the last of four constitutional scholars to testify on the first day of hearings by the House Judiciary Committee. He was called by panel Republicans, saying at the outset: "I'm not a supporter of President Trump. I voted against him.
"My personal views of President Trump are as irrelevant to my impeachment testimony as they should be to your impeachment vote.
"President Trump will not be our last president — and what we leave in the wake of this scandal will shape our democracy for generations to come."
Turley, who testified before the committee in the 1998 Clinton hearings, added that his concern was "lowering impeachment standards to fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of anger.
"This not only fails to satisfy the past impeachments but would create a dangerous precedent for future impeachments," he said.
Turley testified that the Trump impeachment process best resembles that of President Andrew Johnson in 1868, which was led by a group called "the radical Republicans, [who] created a trap-door crime in order to impeach the president.
"They even defined it as a high misdemeanor," he said. Johnson, who became president after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, was impeached by the House, but was spared by a single vote in the Senate.
Turley also argued that the Trump process is the shortest compared to those in the past — and that those "all involve established crimes.
"This would be the first impeachment in history where there would be considerable debate — and, in my view, not compelling evidence — of the commission of a crime.
"This is a facially incomplete and inadequate record in order to impeach a president."
The professor slammed the hearings as a "slipshod impeachment" and concluded that the Trump process was "wrong because this is not how you impeach an American president.
"This case is not a case of the unknowable," he argued. "It's a case of the peripheral.
"We have a record of conflicts, defenses that have not been fully considered, un-subpoenaed witnesses with material evidence.
"To impeach a president on this record would expose every future president to the same kind of [flawed] impeachment."
On Twitter, among the many attacking Turley were Newsweek columnist Seth Abramson.
"What Turley just did is gaslight America, telling those of us seeking to uphold rule of law that we're just acting hysterically," he tweeted.
"His conclusion: If you are a well-trained attorney, investigator, researcher and/or journalist who believes Trump committed a crime, you're just 'mad,'" Abramson said.
Audrey Fetterhoff, a genealogy researcher, posted: "Turley has lost his mind and all respect."
But conservative radio talk-show host Bill Mitchell tweeted: "NADLER'S BIG PROBLEM TODAY: These Liberal Trump-hating professors came off as VERY UNLIKABLE today.
"[Stanford Law Professor Pamela] Karlan especially. Just angry, mean and nasty.
"Meanwhile,” Mitchell said, "the professor opposing impeachment as it is being done, Turley, came across as likable and quite reasonable."
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