On Wednesday, Fox News Channel’s legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano released his “Judge Napolitano’s Chambers” video, in which he said the impeachment inquiry currently underway was following the Constitution.
Napolitano said, “Is the impeachment process fair? That is not an easy question to answer. The short answer is—the impeachment process is whatever the House of Representatives decides it should be. That is because of two clauses in the Constitution. One says the House of Representatives shall have sole power to impeach. So only the House of Representatives can conduct an impeachment. The second clause states that the House of Representatives can write its own rules. So the House can write whatever rules it wants.”
He continued, “You may not like the rules. You may not agree with the people that are doing this. But under House rules, any one of the House committees—in this case, the Intelligence Committee—can begin to interview witnesses. The witness are interviewed by Democratic members of the committee and Republican members of the committee to decide if these witnesses have evidence of impeachable offenses by the president. Then they have to decide—are the witnesses credible, is the evidence believable, is this a case for impeachment, should we present this to the public? All of that takes time and is traditionally done behind closed doors. If they decide to move forward on impeachment, there will be great public debates on the floor of the House and elsewhere about the meaning of the evidence and the credibly of the witnesses.”
He added, “If the president of the United States of America intentionally withheld military aid and financial assistance the Congress had authorized and ordered to an ally the Ukraine, which was threatened with invasion by Russia, until that ally did a personal favor for the presidents campaign that he asked for, did he commit an impeachable offense? The answer is — if the House of Representatives says it was impeachable, it was impeachable.”
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