FNC’s Napolitano, McCarthy Push Back on Turley’s Anti-Impeachment Argument: ‘Simply Wrong’

On Wednesday, during Fox News Channel’s special coverage of the Judiciary Committee impeachment inquiry hearings, Fox News legal commentators Andrew Napolitano and Andy McCarthy took a critical look at George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley’s argument against impeaching President Donald Trump.

Napolitano said, “Where I disagree with my dear friend, I’ve worked with him and testified alongside him, Jonathan Turley, on the significance of obstruction of justice, he is forgetting that the House has the sole, s-o-l-e power of impeachment. It does not need to go to a court for approval. It doesn’t need to get its subpoena enforced. When the president receives a subpoena, Mick Mulvaney, Mike Pompeo receive a subpoena, and they throw it in a drawer. They do not comply or challenge because the president told them to, that is the act of obstruction. Jonathan Turley has argued that the Congress needs to go to court and get an order to enforce the subpoena. And the failure to comply with that court subpoena is obstruction. That is a misreading of the obstruction statute.”

McCarthy said, “I happen to agree with the judge, I do not think that to the extent that John Turley is taking the position that you either have to or you should go to the court if you are Congress to enforce your subpoenas, I think that is simply wrong. I don’t think the framers would have thought that the Article 1 branch needed the assistance of the Article 3 branch to impeach an officer of the Article 2 branch. I don’t think that’s conceivable.”

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