Prof. Jonathan Turley has two excellent and revealing columns up right now, one dealing with the ongoing assault on Donald Trump from the Axis of Unethical Conduct that Ethics Alarms readers are familiar with (that’s the “resistance”/Democratic Party/mainstream media alliance that set out to punish Trump for defeating Hillary Clinton in 2016), and the other, stunningly, advocating a House inquiry into the impeachment of Joe Biden.

I have a special interest in both columns, which I will explain while sending you, I hope, over to Prof. Turley’s site to read both of his essays. I want to begin by, not for the first time, saluting Turley. He has courageously maintained studied objectivity and a lack of partisan bias in his erudite commentary on the political horrors of the past nearly three decades, beginning with his guest appearances on cable and network news shows during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Because the George Washington Law School professor has not disgraced himself like so many of his academic colleagues by submitting to full-blown Trump Derangement and woke-polluter legal analysis, he is now widely derided on the Left (and presumably at GW) as knee-jerk conservative and Republican apologist, which he definitely is not. As a result, Turley, who once was welcome on all of the public affairs shows and had op-eds in the usual leftist-propaganda publications, is now reduced to offering commentary on Fox News and the conservative New York Post, with The Hill being his only remaining non-GOP leaning platform. He also feels required to place an “I’m not biased, I’m an objective and fact-driven analyst” litany in every blog post that points out that an Axis position is unethical or wrong. For example, here is one from yesterday’s column about the Washington Post’s misrepresentation of the Georgia indictment against Trump:

“When the Mar-a-Lago indictment came down, I was one of the first to say that I considered it a strong case. I have since noted that the case seems to be strengthening with time….I have long disagreed with Trump over his claim of systemic voting fraud. I criticized Trump’s Jan. 6 speech while he was giving it. I supported Vice President Mike Pence and his certification of the election of Joe Biden. I have also regularly criticized Trump when I felt that such criticism was warranted. This does not change my view of whether the call is compelling evidence of a crime….”

It’s an indictment of the state of our public discourse that Turley feels compelled to do that—he issues comparable disclaimers several times a week—but that’s what honest pundits they have to in these times of intimidation and cancellation by the totalitarian left. (Last week, I was asked to delete the reference to Ethics Alarms in my CV accompanying my expert opinion in a court case because “the judge is very progressive.”) Here are my brief comments on the two recent columns.

I. Yes, Trump was Seeking Another Recount or Investigation in Georgia: A Response to the Washington Post

Here Turley defenestrates the dishonest, biased, partisan and typically unethical bleatings of the Washington Post’s Phillip Bump, who has an extensive EA dossier. Bump is an embarrassment, but the Post no longer has the integrity to be embarrassed by giving a platform to a flaming hack. In the course of rebutting a recent Bump column in which the Post propagandist was foolish enough to challenge Turley by name, the Professor also explains why the Georgia indictment of Trump is bad law. He writes in part,

…the standard that Bump sets forth for prosecution — imputing criminality to a politician’s refusal to accept inconvenient facts — could just as easily be used to prosecute any number of others, such as Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who baselessly sought to block certification of Trump’s 2016 victory by disenfranchising the voters of Florida.

Was Hillary Clinton guilty of criminal “false statements” when she claimed that her defeat was the result of a “stolen” election and called Trump an “illegitimate president”? How about Stacey Abrams in Georgia, who refused to accept her own defeat for governor in 2018? Then there are Democratic lawyers such as Marc Elias, who filed challenges to overturn a New York election of a Republican on the basis of machines changing the outcome. Elias has been sanctioned in other litigation on different grounds and was behind the hiding of the funding of the Steele Dossier by the Clinton campaign, but no one suggested that he or others challenging elections were criminal actors. Despite my long criticism of Elias’ record and practices, I would be the first to oppose similar charges for the same reason. Mediaite … has called it “crazy” to make any comparison between what Trump did and Democrats challenging prior certifications. This convenient dismissal is based on the fact that, “by the time Trump unsuccessfully leaned on” Raffensperger, recounts had already been carried out. He must have known that it was false, the argument goes, and as I (and many others) stated at the time, a further investigation was unlikely to produce enough votes. However, there was never any credible evidence to support Democratic challenges such as those brought by Raskin and others in 2016. Nor was there ever any evidence that the election was “stolen” as Clinton claimed, nor that Abrams was robbed.

In law, this isn’t “whataboutism.” The standards have to be the same for members of both parties and all citizens. The 2016 Post Election Ethics Train Wreck, in sharp contrast, has been defined by devising new standards to try to bring down Donald Trump.

Do read all of Turley’s commentary.

2.Why the House Has No Alternative to an Impeachment Inquiry into President Biden

Turley was adamant that both of Nancy Pelosi’s “Get Trump!” impeachment were Constitutionally and legally flawed, so I was surprised to see him endorse an impeachment inquiry for President Biden over the weekend. Biden has arguably engaged in several of impeachable offenses in the past three years in my view…

…but Turley is focusing on the astoundingly corrupt handling of the Hunter Biden scandal by the Biden Administration. He writes in part,

Even before the collapse of a widely condemned “sweetheart deal” with Hunter, the investigation headed by U.S. Attorney David Weiss was a growing concern for many observers. In prior years, I wrote about Garland’s refusal to appoint a special counsel despite the obvious conflicts posed by the potential involvement of President Biden in his son’s alleged influence-peddling scandal. I also raised the problem of an investigation that remained ongoing for years as the statute of limitations expired on major potential crimes….Whatever interest — or ability — remains to prosecute Hunter Biden, Congress has a separate duty to confirm any high crimes and misdemeanors committed by President Biden. Indeed, the Democrats themselves established precedent for carrying out retroactive impeachments for prior offices, including any which may have occurred when Biden was vice president….With the current state of the Hunter Biden investigation and the baffling conduct of Attorney General Garland, there is no alternative for the House but to launch the impeachment inquiry.

An investigation and Watergate-style hearings are certainly warranted, particularly with recent revelations of Biden using various aliases online and this disturbing report. Nonetheless, I am convinced that the Democrats effectively destroyed the important Constitutional impeachment option with their abuse of it by employing impeachment as a means of partisan warfare and election manipulation. Few Americans will regard any subsequent impeachment effort as anything else now, especially after the Democrats magnified their attack on democratic processes by holding a three-year-long, partisan kangaroo court regarding the January 6 Capitol riot. No matter how justified and necessary an investigation of the Biden Presidency might be, it is guaranteed to be attacked by the Axis as partisan payback while the public rolls its collective eyes. Then, if the House voted for impeachment, there is no chance that enough Democrats would have the courage or integrity to vote guilty in the Senate, even if the charges were serious, overwhelming, and proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Turley is advocating a compete waste of time on principle.

Law professors can do that, I suppose. But still read his column.