The witnesses -- law professor Jonathan Turley, along with former prosecutors Eileen O’Connor and Doug Dubinsky -- were all smeared by Krishnamoorthi, with the treatment of Turley standing out as particularly disgusting.
Out of absolutely nowhere, Krishnamoorthi accused Turley of supporting polygamy and pedophilia.
“You’ve been crusading for legalizing polygamy for years. In fact, in an op-ed in the USA Today, you said that a Utah polygamist named Tom Green, who was also convicted of pedophilia for raping his 13-year-old stepdaughter, should not have been charged with polygamy,” the Congressman seethed.
Let's set to one side the fact that Turley was representing clients in 2006, and has a history of opposing morality based legislation on issues such as polygamy. The real question is what on earth did any of that have to do with impeachment?
The answer, of course, is that it has nothing to do with impeachment, rather, it is a not-so-subtle attempt to intimidate any witness who has the temerity to criticize President Joe Biden in a hearing in the House, and sadly, it has been a pattern.
One must only recall the shocked looks on the faces of journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger when Virgin Islands Delegate Stacey Plaskett accused them of being “so-called journalists” chosen by Republicans to help them politically during a hearing on the Weaponization of the Federal Government to begin to see that pattern.
“Ranking member Plaskett, I’m not a so-called journalist,” Taibbi fired back, “I’ve won the National Magazine Award, the I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and I’ve written 10 books, including four New York Times bestsellers.”
To Democrats it doesn’t matter, they will happily harm Taibbi’s professional reputation by accusing him of being a grifter.
Or how about when Rep. Linda Sánchez accused FBI whistleblower Marcus Allen of tweeting that Nancy Pelosi had staged January 6th, only to have Allen tell her it was not his Twitter account, at which point, incredibly, she demanded to know if Allen agreed with a random tweet from an account with his incredibly common name.
It's the kind of stuff that would make Stalin proud.
Make no mistake, all of these appalling incidents send a crystal clear message that anyone who dares to criticize Joe Biden or the deep state will have every skeleton wrested from their closets and be publicly humiliated by members of Congress.
This, frankly, borders on witness intimidation, as any person with knowledge or information about the Biden brand scandal or government corruption will obviously think twice before coming forward, and I fear that is the point.
Turley put it well, in a fiery response to the unwarranted attacks, “You know, this has become a pattern of witnesses, whistleblowers, FBI agents, journalists being attacked in Congress. It won’t make any difference. It won’t change the constitutional standard,” he said.
“It won’t negate any evidence that you have. But at some point, you’ve got to say enough. You know, that we have to have something, the public has to have something in Congress to look to, to have faith. And I have to tell you, it’s not that I think that absurd attack meant any difference to my children or to the people that are watching. It makes a difference to our process.”
Hear, hear.
It makes a huge difference to our process, because this kind of impugning of witnesses' characters has real life consequences, there are millions of people who will believe Plaskett’s lies about Taibbi, and Krishnamoorthi’s about Turley.
It also plays into a pernicious trend on the left to treat conservatives not as people they disagree with, but as corrupt, evil, bad human beings.
A representative democracy cannot survive if half of the country believes that the other half are immoral liars who shouldn’t even be listened to, but that is exactly the example that House Democrats are setting.
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries needs to get this situation under control. If the Democrats in his caucus have no sense of decency or shame themselves, then he must insist upon it. Americans have a right to appear before Congress without being subject to baseless smears.
The worst part about this abusive pattern of behavior from Democrats is how normal it seems these days, it's not normal, not by a longshot, and we should absolutely expect better from those privileged to represent us in Congress.
Jonathan Turley, and so many others, are owed apologies they will likely never get, but that doesn’t mean we should forget.
Every time Democrats use this shameful tactic they must be called out for the enormous harm they are doing to our nation.
