Jonathan Turley Still Can't Figure Out Calendar, Constitution

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

It took several days for Jonathan Turley to realize that his smoking gun legal theory about Hunter Biden, published in the New York Post, relied on Joe Biden serving as Vice President... in 2018. Fans of linear time might recognize that 2018 was well into the Trump administration and that Joe Biden is not, in fact, Mike Pence. Turley eventually futzed with the wording to remove the reference to the elder Biden as "then Vice President," though since his whole fakakta theory of the case rested on that claim, he might as well have deleted the whole article.

And it looks like the George Washington University law professor-cum-local crank has learned his lesson. Not the "how to read a calendar" lesson, but the "scrub the internet of your mistakes" lesson.

"What is curious" is one of Turley's favorite Twitter openings, having gone to that well already a couple times this month. But what is perhaps not-so-curious is why the author opted to quickly memory hole this tweet (attaching an article we dealt with here):

Missed it by a mere 365 days.

Because, of course, January 2, 2024 is not 4 days before the counting of the electoral votes. Indeed, it's almost two weeks before the first GOP nominating contest. So, to answer the question posed by his article, the odds of his scenario are roughly zero.

Silly mistakes can happen. But Turley proclaims himself (and Fox News curiously considers him to be) a constitutional law expert and this is basic Constitution reading comprehension! It's one thing to slip up in casual conversation and a whole other thing to use your Twitter Blue -- or X Blue, or whatever -- account to memorialize a professional proclamation in your supposed area of expertise that's just... wrong.

It's like a color commentator declaring the Super Bowl over after the third quarter, except those ex-jocks could at least blame CTE for the screw up.

Coupled with the earlier Hunter Biden flub, Turley is making a trend of issuing slapdash legal analysis based on careless mistakes. If he sees an opportunity to appeal to the NY Post or Fox News, he appears willing to shoot his mouth off first and try to figure out the facts and law later.

Unfortunately, figuring out the facts and the law before giving an opinion is sort of the whole point of a "legal analyst."

Earlier: Jonathan Turley Has New Theory To Bust Hunter Biden And All It Requires Is Warping The Fabric Of Space-Time
Jonathan Turley Says It's 'Untoward' And 'Unwise' To Put Odds On Trump Case... THEN SAYS IT'S '50-50?