On Tuesday’s Anderson Cooper 360, CNN senior political commentator and former presidential adviser David Gergen warned that “we are in impeachment territory for the first time” in light of The New York Times report about the Jim Comey memo in which President Trump allegedly asked him to end the Mike Flynn investigation.
In the 24 hours since Gergen’s claim, Gergen doubled down on Wednesday’s CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin, fretting that this all goes “to the heart of the presidency.”
Speaking to Baldwin, Gergen reaffirmed his belief of impeachment on the horizon but simultaneously claimed that “it's way too early to say one way or the other but I think it's not too early to say we are dealing with very serious matters.”
He added:
They go to the heart of the presidency and it's one of the reasons there is so much, you know, fear in Washington now about where all of this is going and whether, in fact, among Republicans it's going to impair their capacity to pass the rest of the legislative agenda, that they really want to pass.
Back to Tuesday night and the same guy who said Trump had the worst first 100 days of any president (above Williams Henry Harrison, who died 31 days in) had this to say:
Well, I must say I was in the Nixon administration as you know. I thought after watching the Clinton impeachment. I thought I would never see another one, but I think we are in impeachment territory for the first time.
With that, Gergen cemented his role as a modern-day EF Hutton of sorts in the eyes of the liberal media.
“Well, I think that the obstruction of justice was the number one charge against Nixon, that brought him down. Obstruction of justice was the number one charge against Bill Clinton, which led to his indictment in the House. He won in the Senate,” Gergen continued.
Gergen bragged that he’s “a lapsed lawyer” and thus he couldn’t “tell you what it means to call a legal definition, but I can tell you from a lay point of view, it looks like he was trying to impede the investigation.” In turn, Gergen opined that Trump’s presidency is “starting to come apart.”
Just as George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley has done, fellow liberal lawyer Alan Dershowitz pumped the brakes on the rush to impeach and convict the President:
And I think it's much better to keep this a political issue and not to muddy the waters with legalisms, because, first of all, a sitting president being indicted, it's not going to happen. Is this an impeachable offense? Well, it doesn't have to be a technical crime committed by the president to be an impeachable offense. If somebody commits -- if a president commits an act which would be a crime when committed by someone else, then, the House can consider that as impeachable and remember, there's no judicial review of what's impeachable The Constitution says high crimes and misdemeanors, but there's no judicial review. That's separation of powers, as well as the president's ability to control the FBI as separation of power.
Hysterically, Gergen fired back by invoking ultra-liberal Laurence Tribe as someone who’s corralling together a case to take down Trump. Sure, the guy who was a Ted Cruz birther is a reasonable person! Not even close.
Dershowitz tried to push back, but Gergen kept rambling on, speculating to a future Democratic Congress in 2018, which is unwise since we can’t even predict what the political scene will be like six hours in advance.
“And the Democratic majority could then bring an indictment against the president, whether on emoluments or obstruction of justice, or number of other things, but there are serious people now, and Larry Tribe is a constitutional scholar, who are talking in these terms now,” Gergen concluded.
Even more comically, serial liar and MSNBC host Brian Williams was happy to tout the claims Gergen leveled on the rival liberal cable network. Williams perhaps paraphrased Gergen aloud so as not to tout any opinion he may have himself on the idea of impeachment and not telling the truth (seeing as how this sort of alleged behavior was what caused him to lose his job at NBC Nightly News).
Here’s the relevant portions of the transcript from CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 on May 17:
CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360
May 17, 2017
8:14 p.m. Eastern
DAVID GERGEN: Well, I must say I was in the Nixon administration as you know. I thought after watching the Clinton impeachment. I thought I would never see another one, but I think we are in impeachment territory for the first time.
COOPER: Really?
GERGEN: Well, I think that the obstruction of justice was the number one charge against Nixon, that brought him down. Obstruction of justice was the number one charge against Bill Clinton, which led to his indictment in the House. He won in the Senate and I think, I'm a lapsed lawyer. I cannot tell you what it means to call a legal definition, but I can tell you from a lay point of view, it looks like he was trying to impede the investigation. He was using his power to do that and when James Comey didn't go along with him, when he wasn't his boy, he fired him, which I think is also relevant to the question of what he was trying to do. So, from my point of view, this is of enormous consequence for his presidency. I think if you look at the three bombshells we've had, the Comey firing the last week. Then the sharing of this highly classified with the Russians of all people and now, telling Comey to drop the case, what we see is the presidency that's starting to come apart.
(....)
8:19 p.m. Eastern
ALAN DERSHOWITZ: And I think it's much better to keep this a political issue and not to muddy the waters with legalisms, because, first of all, a sitting president being indicted, it's not going to happen. Is this an impeachable offense? Well, it doesn't have to be a technical crime committed by the president to be an impeachable offense. If somebody commits -- if a president commits an act which would be a crime when committed by someone else, then, the House can consider that as impeachable and remember, there's no judicial review of what's impeachable The Constitution says high crimes and misdemeanors, but there's no judicial review. That's separation of powers, as well as the president's ability to control the FBI as separation of power.
COOPER: David, you seem to have issues —
GERGEN: As you well know, Alan, your good friend Larry Tribe is part of an effort now to build —
DERSHOWITZ: Right.
GERGEN: — building a case for —
DERSHOWITZ: And we're on e-mail back and forth.
GERGEN: Sure you are, but it is based on the idea that if the Democrats were to take back the House, in 2018, there will be cases coming through the courts. And the Democratic majority could then bring an indictment against the president, whether on emoluments or obstruction of justice, or number of other things, but there are serious people now, and Larry Tribe is a constitutional scholar, who are talking in these terms now.
