How to watch the House Judiciary Committee's first impeachment hearing
Washington — The impeachment inquiry is entering a new phase this week as hearings begin before the House Judiciary Committee. Wednesday features testimony from four constitutional law experts on the historical basis for impeachment.
The hearing, scheduled to start at 10 a.m. ET, comes two weeks after the first round of public testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. Democrats on Tuesday released their report detailing their findings from a nearly two-month investigation into President Trump's dealings with Ukraine, which they plan to transmit to the Judiciary Committee to inform the upcoming proceedings.
How to watch this week's impeachment hearing
- Date: Wednesday, December 4, 2019
- Time: 10 a.m. ET
- Who: Four constitutional law experts: Noah Feldman, Pamela Karlan, Michael Gerhardt and Jonathan Turley
- Online stream: CBSN, in the player above and on your mobile or streaming device
- On TV: Your local CBS station
- Follow: Impeachment hearing live blog
Under the resolution governing the process for impeachment inquiry, the Judiciary Committee is responsible for pursuing actual articles of impeachment if warranted. If adopted by the committee, the full House would then vote on whether to impeach Mr. Trump on the charges. If that's successful, the Senate would then hold a trial to decide whether to acquit the president or convict and remove him from office.
Democratic Chairman Jerry Nadler offered to let the president and his legal team participate in Wednesday's hearing, but the White House counsel rejected the offer as insufficient in a letter on Sunday.
On Monday, the Judiciary Committee released the list of witnesses for Wednesday's hearing: Noah Feldman, Pamela Karlan, Michael Gerhardt and Jonathan Turley.
Who is Noah Feldman?
Feldman is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law and director of the Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law at Harvard Law School. A Rhodes scholar, Feldman graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University and earned his law degree at Yale, according to his Harvard biography.
Feldman clerked for Supreme Court Justice David Souter in the late 1990s and served as a senior constitutional adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003, where he then helped Iraqi officials draft an interim constitution.
Who is Pamela Karlan?
Karlan is the Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law and co-director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford Law School, where she has been on faculty since 1998. According to her Stanford biography, she holds three degrees from Yale University and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun. Karlan was also a deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department.
Karlan has written "leading casebooks on constitutional law, constitutional litigation, and the law of democracy, as well as numerous scholarly articles," according to Stanford.
Who is Michael Gerhardt?
Gerhardt is the Burton Craige Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of North Carolina School of Law, where he has been a faculty member since 2005.
He was a witness during the Clinton impeachment hearings in the House and has testified before Congress more than a dozen times, according to his Carolina Law biography. Gerhardt spoke behind closed doors to the full House about the history of impeachment in 1998.
Gerhardt has written six books on "impeachment, appointments, presidential power, Supreme Court precedent, and separation of powers," according to the school.
Who is Jonathan Turley?
Turley is the J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at The George Washington University Law School, which he joined as a faculty member in 1990. He is also a CBS News legal analyst and one of the country's most recognized legal commentators.
A witness during the Clinton impeachment proceedings, Turley has been critical of the Democrats' handling of the current inquiry, as well as the White House's arguments against cooperating with the probe. Turley has written and testified extensively on executive privilege.
He has testified before Congress on a number of other occasions, including the Senate confirmation hearings of Attorneys General Loretta Lynch and William Barr, as well as the Supreme Court nomination of Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch.