Pamela Karlan, one of three witnesses chosen by Democrats to testify on Day One of the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment probe, donated $1,000 in July to the presidential campaign of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
Per Federal Elections Commission (FEC) data, Karlan gave the Warren for President, Inc. campaign committee two $500 donations on July 29, 2019.
The Massachusetts senator isn’t the only recipient of Karlan’s political giving. The liberal legal scholar also donated $500 to the 2020 campaign of Representative Josh Harder (D-Calif.).
Harder voiced his public support for the impeachment inquiry on September 24, the same day as Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and just one day before the White House released a transcript of a July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy.
Warren, meanwhile, was among the first presidential candidates to call for the president’s impeachment, doing so shortly after the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on alleged Russian collusion.
Karlan is testifying Wednesday along with three Democratic witnesses and one Republican witness. The Judiciary Committee’s witnesses are not “fact witnesses,” but legal scholars giving their opinions on the impeachment question from a constitutional perspective.
Karlan is widely known for her liberal views. Earlier this year, she represented two men who claimed they were fired from their jobs for being gay, in a case that made it all the way to the Supreme Court (the case remains undecided), one of nine times she has argued before the nation’s highest judicial body.
During a stint in the U.S. Department of Justice as deputy assistant attorney general for voting rights from 2014 to 2015, Karlan was in charge of implementing the Supreme Court ruling that killed the Defense of Marriage Act, which had defined marriage as being between one man and one woman for federal purposes.
Additionally, Karlan has worked as an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and as a commissioner on California’s Fair Political Practices Commission. She was considered as a possible Supreme Court nominee in the early years of the Obama administration.
In her prepared opening testimony before the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Karlan said that President Trump committed an “abuse of power” when he “demanded” the “involvement” of foreign actors in the U.S. electoral process.
Everything I know about our Constitution and its values, and my review of the evidentiary record, tells me that when President Trump invited — indeed, demanded — foreign involvement in our upcoming election, he struck at the very heart of what makes this country the “republic” to which we pledge allegiance. That demand constituted an abuse of power.
Judiciary Committee ranking member Doug Collins (R-Ga.) took a shot at Karlan during his opening statement:
America will see why most people don’t go to law school. No offense to our professors. But please, really, we’re bringing you in here today to testify on stuff most of you have already written about, all four, for the opinions that we already know out of the classrooms that maybe you’re getting ready for finals in, to discuss things that you probably haven’t had a chance — unless you’re really good on TV of watching the hearings over the last couple of weeks, you couldn’t have possibly actually digested the Adam Schiff report from yesterday or the Republican response in any real way.
Karlan responded that she had “read transcripts of every one of the witnesses who appeared in the live hearing” and was “I’m insulted by the suggestion that as a law professor I don’t care about those facts.”
Another Democrat witness, North Carolina Law School professor Michael Gerhardt, accused President Trump of attacking “safeguards” against “monarchy” in a prepared version of his opening statement published by CBS.
Gerhardt stated that “the record compiled thus far shows that the president has committed several impeachable offenses, including bribery, abuse of power in soliciting a personal favor from a foreign leader to benefit his political campaign, obstructing Congress, and obstructing justice.”
“When we apply our constitutional law to the facts found in the Mueller Report and other public sources, I cannot help but conclude that this president has attacked each of the Constitution’s safeguards against establishing a monarchy in this country,” he added.
The Intelligence Committee voted late Tuesday to approve and send to the Judiciary Committee an impeachment report authored by Intelligence chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).
The report accused the president of a “scheme” that “subverted U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine and undermined our national security in favor of two politically motivated investigations that would help his presidential reelection campaign.”
It is now up to the Judiciary Committee, headed by Representative Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), to determine whether to approve articles of impeachment for a vote by the full House.
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Luis Miguel is a writer whose journalistic endeavors shed light on the Deep State, the immigration crisis, and the enemies of freedom. Follow his exploits on Facebook, Twitter, Bitchute, and at luisantoniomiguel.com.