Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman testified against President Donald Trump Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee, saying the president committed abuse of power based on his interpretation of the what the framers of the Constitution intended for impeachment.
Feldman is not only a constitutional expert, he’s a liberal who has openly written about his dislike of Trump. He’s also touted as an expert with regard to the Middle East, and assisted Iraq in the drafting of their own constitution.
This is where the two very divergent topics connect in a strange way.
He argued in absolute terms Wednesday that Trump’s phone call with President Voldomyr Zelensky was enough to impeach the president based on absolutely no evidence (we’ve all read the transcripts) and have seen the testimony. He argued that everything Trump did–based only on witness hearsay — is enough to impeach the president of the United States.
Don’t buy it. I remember these types of professors in college and they really don’t have open minds. They push their agenda on their students and expect their students to buy it hook, line and sinker.
Take Feldman for example. All one needs to do is read his writings and cut through the bull to see that he really isn’t all he’s cracked up to be.
I found an interesting article from 2003 on Feldman at Campus Watch. The authors question Feldman’s assumption two years after the Sept. 11th attacks that ‘Jihad is Over.’ We know now based on our own history since the attacks that Feldman was wrong in his argument.
In fact, he was flat out wrong. All one needs to do is look at the rise of ISIS and the numerous attacks that have taken place around the globe since 2003 by Islamist extremists.
He attempts to argue that Islamists ideology is evolving is void of reality when he bought into the assumption that the extremists welcomed Democracy. He suggested in 2003, that Al-Qa’ida became “politically irrelevant” after the attacks and that the “alarmist argument is behind the curve.”
That was only two years after Al-Qa’ida attacked the United States and killed 3,000 people. Further, we’ve seen what happened since with extremists organizations, such as Islamic State.
I disagree vehemently with Feldman’s assessment on Trump and his assumption that being vigilant against extremism is somehow ‘behind the curve.’
In his book, After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy, he argued in 2003, that mainstream Islamists don’t want jihad, they want democracy: “The Islamists’ call for democratic change in the Muslim world marks a fundamental shift in their strategy.”
Feldman:
The Islamists never got a chance, really, to govern, and if there’s one central argument that I’m trying to press in the book, it’s that Islamists who say they are committed democrats, who tell you that they believe in democracy, who believe that Islam and democracy are deeply compatible, not incompatible, should be given a chance to govern. They’ve never been given that chance anywhere, and I think many, many people in the Muslim world—not all, but many—would vote for them, Feldman
I believe he is just as wrong regarding impeaching President Trump, based again, on his assumption about what the framers intended regarding articles of impeachment in the Constitution.