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Prof. Jonathan Turley Hits Back At Debbie Wasserman Schultz Attempt To Discredit Him at House Hearing

Prof. Jonathan Turley Hits Back At Debbie Wasserman Schultz Attempt To Discredit Him at House Hearing

“This may be the largest censorship system in the history of our country.”

Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University testified before the House Committee on Weaponization this week. Turley was there to offer analysis as a legal expert on Twitter and the revelations of the TwitterFiles.

His testimony was calm and reasoned, as usual, but when Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz had a chance to question him, all she did was try to discredit him.

Turley recently wrote at The Hill:

Congress is set to expose what may be the largest censorship system in U.S. history

This coming week a new House select subcommittee will hold its first hearing on the FBI and the possible “weaponization” of government agencies. A variety of such controversies have contributed to plunging public trust in government and the FBI in particular.

The role of the FBI in prior scandals will remain a point of heated debate in Congress. However, members of both parties should be able to agree on the need to investigate one of the most serious allegations: Censorship by surrogate.

Many of the allegations of FBI bias are worthy of investigation. Some of those allegations are problems of personnel who can be removed. But a far more menacing problem has emerged in recent months with the release of information from Twitter.

The “Twitter files” revealed an FBI operation to monitor and censor social media content — an effort so overwhelming and intrusive that Twitter staff at one point complained internally that “they are probing & pushing everywhere.” The reports have indicated that dozens of FBI employees worked on the identification and removal of material on a wide range of subjects and that Twitter largely carried out their requests.

In his opening remarks, which you should watch below, Turley points out the fairly recent public distrust of the FBI, which he says is dangerous.

He also comments on what the Twitterfiles have exposed, saying “This may be the largest censorship system in the history of our country.”

After all of that eloquent and reasoned commentary, enter Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Mike Miller writes at RedState:

Here’s how Wasserman-Schultz kicked off her line of questions of the legal expert:

So essentially your answers to questions yesterday were your own opinion and pure conjecture.

As is his style, Turley politely responded, “No, I wouldn’t say that, I try to base them on what we know from the Twitter Files—” before DSW interrupted with the same nonsensical premise: “But this is only just your opinion, would you say, as a Twitter account user?” Is it possible Debbie’s unaware of the role of legal expert, or any expert witness?

Turley tried again: “No, I’ve come to give legal advice based on facts that are in the public domain and I would really refer to—” but Wasserman Schultz again butted in, telling Turley he was using up her time. So, that’s how that went. Wasserman Schultz was simply in way over her head, and Turley refused to agree with her silly premise, so she continued to interrupt him.

Turley addressed her line of questioning on FOX News:

JONATHAN TURLEY: The congresswoman was asking if I’ve ever worked at Twitter as a condition for my talking about what the Twitter Files say. It’s like saying you have to work at the Pentagon if you want to testify about the implications of the Pentagon Papers. The point of witnesses before committees is often to give legal analysis based on what is known and what could be found in this investigation. The exchange she was referring to was a member who expressly asked me about the Twitter Files and what this suggests about what I’ve called censorship by surrogate. And then she went into this issue of, ‘Well, you’ve never worked at Twitter.

How do you know what goes on at Twitter?,’ which is completely absurd. The whole premise of my testimony was that Twitter has now authenticated and confirmed these facts. These facts are coming from Twitter. These are Twitter files. And the facts indicate that they had weekly meetings with the government. They indicate that the government would send long lists of citizens and others to be targeted, censored, to be in some cases, banned. Those are very serious allegations that raise constitutional questions, which is why I was there to discuss it.

Watch the video below:

Democrats do not want to discuss this issue. That’s rather telling, isn’t it?

Featured image via YouTube.

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Comments

Old New Yorker cartoon, dinner table wife to businessman, “Now, don’t try to reason with me.” It’s a standard method now. Wayne Booth, a dean at U Chicago, made it a title of one of his books.

    Don’t get distracted by the ‘symptoms’, but look at the disease: Marxist infilatration. Then look at the carrier: Communist China. Then look at the spreaders (that is, the corrupted in our government paid by China: Biden, McConnell, the democrat party, the GOPe).

    Never try to reason with a useful idiot. Just inflict as much pain as possible – it’s the only way they’ll learn.

Turley’s piece today in the NY Post is a knock it out of the park grand slam homer.

https://nypost.com/2023/02/10/twitter-censorship-is-the-modern-day-red-scare/

Too few people know the actual danger. Amazingly, so-called liberals are often the most ignorant of the lot. Or just Marxists pretending.

Hope to see more pieces that send this message. Great job, Turley! On that we can all agree.

In congressional hearings to impeach Trump they called William Taylor or to testify. “Taylor admitted that he had no first-hand or second-hand knowledge of any of the developments. Yet Democrats presented him as their star witness in this whole endeavour to impeach the president.”

Back then it was okay to call witnesseses whose knowledge of key events was largely third-hand. “But not any more”, Debbie says. “No sireee.”

    Paula in reply to Paula. | February 11, 2023 at 12:35 pm

    After Taylor testified with his third hand evidence, Debbie Wasserman Schultz wrote, “Indisputable evidence shows that he (Trump) violated his oath.” “Impeach him.” Blah, blah, blah. On and on.

    MosesZD in reply to Paula. | February 11, 2023 at 12:43 pm

    Rules for thee, but not for me.

    henrybowman in reply to Paula. | February 11, 2023 at 5:32 pm

    Debbie is yet one more notable Democrat who (hired/slept with/did shady business with) foreign (agents/criminals/con artists) and got burned as a result. That she should be allowed to sit in judgment of the judgment of other people is a travesty.

If only the last election was fair, the weak majority the Republicans have should have been a lot stronger and the Senate shouldn’t have switched to Democrats

    healthguyfsu in reply to Skip. | February 11, 2023 at 1:05 pm

    The Senate didn’t switch to Dems. They already had it. They just widened their lead to try and nullify Manchin. They still have to contend with both Sinema and Manchin if they agree because there is no longer a VP vote.

      Huh? The VP still gets to break ties, same as before. There will just be fewer ties, since they have one more vote than they had before.

Democrats don’t want to talk about issues because they are the issue.

Bravo. About time we stopped letting the left make outrageous claims without consequence.

Both parties will not agree to investigate collusion between federal agencies, NGO’s and private entities. For the past six years republicans sat on their hands – or even echoed – democrat party talking points.

If past events preview future behavior appointing a republican special prosecutor will lead to a deadend of silence (tacit complicity.)

The vile Dumb-o-crats are intellectual and emotional toddlers occupying adults’ bodies. Attempting to reason with them in good faith is a pointless and thankless exercise. The Dumbs will never concede any points, such is their fanaticism, zealotry, stupidity and dishonesty.

    “The Dumbs will never concede any points, such is their fanaticism, zealotry, stupidity and dishonesty….”

    Why SHOULD they?? That’s all they’ve got! You think AOC wants to go back to bartending? Or Maxine Waters getting a job in the post office?

    We really need to accelerate our conversations past any kind of wonderment about how the fascists won’t ‘concede’ any points.

    Did Roosevelt ‘concede’ any points to the Japanese after Pearl Harbor? Did Churchill ‘concede’ any points to Hitler after Dunkirk?

    We’re at war, people. The shooting has already started, it’s just low-key. And much of the war is being waged by us what is the corrupt shell of our former government.

It used to be said that a Republican is a Democrat who got mugged.

Turley may not yet be a Republican, but he’s a Democrat who keeps getting mugged.

    gonzotx in reply to Michael. | February 11, 2023 at 3:14 pm

    He most likely no longer believes he is a dem but
    fakes it as to not get cancelled and possibly lose his job

    No way he’s not nuts like the left.He’s like an old time Democrat who had a moral base, or so they thought

    That’s totally missing today and he doesn’t hate his Country… there’s that

    henrybowman in reply to Michael. | February 11, 2023 at 5:37 pm

    Some “Republicans” are just Democrats who fail to brainlessly echo all the party lines.
    For example, 2023 Elon Musk, as compared with 2019 Elon Musk.

That clip reminds me…

I’m running low on mayonnaise

MS Wassermann def put Turkey to the test. Gotta wonder if the results will be coming from GW Law or. GW. Med School..

The very last dem on the panel was new house rep dan goldman, you may know the name from the first trump impeachment, he was lead counsel. he tried to discredit turley as well as the retired fbi agent. he got to the point of making snarky, smartass comments about his previous work as an author.

    It’s like that in every committee, every time.
    –Dem asking questions of a Leftist : Various versions of “How great you are, we love you.”
    –Dem asking questions of anybody to the right of Stalin : Various versions of “You’re a horrid evil person who hates all things good.”
    –Republicans asking questions generally stick to the topic or they disassemble the position of the Leftist on the stage with actual logic.

This member of Congress is not one of its brightest lights

When I hear the name Debbie Wasserman Schultz, I think Debbie Wasserman Test. Is that because she has a hairdo that looks like spirochetes? Or because she’s the personification of a sexually transmitted disease?

I will state the obvious which is that Congressional hearings are a waste of time. Instead of hiring professional prosecutors to go after these criminals, they blather away for their 5 minutes to show us how great they are. Immediately, the left tries to undo what the right just did and so it goes. Nothing is going to happen. This is the part that drove Trump nuts. He is a doer and these people aren’t.

WTF, Florida? WHY did you ever put that creature into office, let alone keep sending it back year after year? I swear, for a state that’s known as the Free State of Florida, you show appalling judgment at times.

    She does not represent Florida; she represents a single district out of 28 and is one of only eight Democrat reps from the entire state. Her district is in South Florida, which has long been solidly blue (though Trump and DeSantis both made inroads down there).

To a battle of wits, Debbie comes unarmed. At least she has her looks to fall back upon…