Laurence Tribe

Megyn Kelly is joined by two legal titans, Alan Dershowitz, Professor Emeritus at Harvard Law School, and Laurence Tribe, Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus at Harvard Law School, to talk about all the angles to Trump impeachment #2. They discuss and debate whether it's even legal to impeach a president who is no longer in office, whether Trump has a First Amendment defense, whether Trump can be found guilty of inciting an insurrection, whether he could be charged with dereliction of duty, the push to take Harvard degrees away and disbar Senators Cruz and Hawley, and more.

Laurence H. Tribe is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus at Harvard, has taught at its Law School since 1968, and was voted the best professor by the graduating class of 2000. In this exclusive briefing organized by the Club of the Association of Foreign Press Correspondents, Professor Tribe will provide his insights on the current Trump’s Impeachment Trial. Allan Dodds Frank, former president of the Overseas Press Club contributed his expertise to the moderation of this briefing.

Donald Trump is now on trial in the Senate for inciting a violent insurrection. But what about his collaborators? Fox “News,” Newsmax, One American News, and other right-wing outlets relentlessly pushed the “Big Lie” that led to this attack. On Jan. 4, for example, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson accused “virtually every power center on Earth” of working “tirelessly … to bypass voters and get Joe Biden to the White House.” “If that’s not rigging an election,” he thundered, “there’s no meaning to that phrase.” Where is the accountability for right-wing propagandists like Carlson, who recklessly splashed around the lighter fluid that ignited on Jan. 6? There is, alas, little that can be done to punish their egregious lies — or to make them stop inciting hatred and violence in the future...I also suggested reviving the Fairness Doctrine, which the FCC stopped enforcing in 1987, and I still think it’s a good idea, but it may not be possible. The original Fairness Doctrine only applied to broadcasters based on the rationale that they were using scarce publicly owned airwaves. It would be much harder under the Supreme Court’s precedents to extend it to cable channels even though fiber-optic cables rely on public rights of way. “The odds that the current Court would permit the revival of the Fairness Doctrine or anything like it are extremely low,” constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe told me.

In a Monday interview on Boston Public Radio, constitutional law expert Laurence Tribe said the coming Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump will be “completely devastating for the country to watch” and predicted that a handful of Trump’s Republican supporters in the Senate will be “shaken” toward a conviction vote. "I believe that the presentations will be spell-binding, and I believe they will be terrifying,” he said. The Senate impeachment trial is scheduled to begin Tuesday. Should all Democrats vote to convict Trump, a total of 17 Republicans will need to cross party lines to meet the two-thirds threshold for a full conviction. Currently, only a handful of Senate Republicans are expected to side with Democrats. At the moment, the two dominant Republican arguments against conviction are that the Constitution doesn’t allow for the impeachment of a president who’s already left office and that Trump’s call for supporters to “fight like hell” on Jan. 6 falls under First Amendment protections. The Harvard Law School professor emeritus, however, said neither of those arguments hold much water. "There are almost no serious people saying that the Senate doesn’t have the power” to convict Trump, he said. To the question of whether the president’s calls to action consititute protected speech, Tribe cited the oft-used example of shouting “fire” in a crowded theater.

Laurence Tribe explained what’s likely to could happen at former President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, including possible First Amendment defense arguments from GOP senators and what Trump could actually end up being charged with. Tribe is the a constitutional law professor emeritus at Harvard Law School.

The World Mental Health Coalition held a National Town Hall, where all panelists agreed it is vitally important to the nation that the Senate convict Donald Trump. As never before in our 231-year history, a president has been impeached for incitement of insurrection. It is imperative the Senate convict former president Donald Trump. Failure to do so would be an unforgivable dereliction of responsibility. Failure to do so would devastate the health of our nation. For these reasons, this extraordinary group of our country’s great legal, psychiatric, and historian minds came together at this moment of historical reckoning. The prestigious panel of speakers included: Laurence Tribe - Constitutional Scholar at the Harvard Law School and one of the country’s most influential Constitutional Law experts.

Rep. Jamie Raskin faces an immediate challenge as the top prosecutor in the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump: Many of the senators acting as jurors don’t think there should be one. The Maryland Democrat was picked by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi(D., Calif.) to serve as the lead impeachment manager in the Senate trial that starts Tuesday. The 58-year-old former constitutional-law professor will lead eight other Democrats in seeking to persuade the Senate to convict Mr. Trump of inciting an insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6...Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, who taught Mr. Raskin, says he pointed Mrs. Pelosi toward Mr. Raskin’s legal knowledge early on after Mr. Raskin joined the House. “There are a lot of constitutional issues that come up in the House of Representatives, and she wanted to know, who did I know that she could lean on when these issues came up?” Mr. Tribe said in an interview. He named Mr. Raskin, as well as Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), the lead manager for Mr. Trump’s first trial, as lawmakers on whom it would be good for Mrs. Pelosi to rely.

Taking aim at a key plank of the former president’s impeachment defense, the lawyers argued that the constitutional protections do not apply to an impeachment proceeding...Signed by Charles Fried, Martha Minow, Gerald Neuman, and Laurence Tribe.

Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe has poured cold water on the free speech defense being put forward by former President Donald Trump’s legal team ahead of his Senate impeachment trial for inciting the deadly U.S. Capitol riot. Trump impeachment counsel David Schoen argued in an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday that the former president’s provocative comments to his supporters before they ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, for which the House impeached Trump for a second time last month, was actually protected by the First Amendment. “We can’t control the reaction of the audience,” Schoen was quoted as saying. CNN’s Erin Burnett on Tuesday asked Tribe if the defense would work. “I don’t think so. It’s a very serious point, but it’s wrong,” Tribe replied. Tribe said he recognized “there is a difference between the right of an ordinary citizen to express herself passionately and the right of someone to run for president, take the oath as president and then stand by the presidential seal in front of the White House and urge an angry mob to burn it down.” The “usual trope about yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater, which isn’t within your rights of free speech, doesn’t quite capture” the severity of Trump’s rhetoric that whipped his supporters into a frenzy ahead of the riot, he added.

TRUMP IMPEACHMENT: ‘His coup failed. But the next one might succeed’ — Legal scholar Laurence Tribe said not removing and disqualifying ‘someone who is a deadly threat’ would present an ‘existential danger’ to the country.

Harvard constitution law professor Laurence Tribe shot down the Trump impeachment counsel’s signaled First Amendment defense of Donald Trump in next week’s Senate trial for inciting an insurrection. Spinning off the “Can’t yell ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater” trope about the limits of free speech, Tribe compared the former president’s incendiary, false claims to “being the fire chief and urging a mob to burn the theater down.” Speaking with CNN’s Erin Burnett on Tuesday night, Tribe, who has assisted the House Democrats’ impeachment team, spoke in response to a brief, New York Times interview with Trump impeachment counsel David Schoen. The lawyer cited the former president’s right to speak his mind and shifted the blame for the Capitol riot fully on those allegedly misinterpreted Trump’s comments: “We can’t control the reaction of the audience.” “It’s a First Amendment defense. Will it hold up?” Burnett asked. “I don’t think so. It’s a very serious point, but it’s wrong,” Tribe said. “I don’t know anybody who is a stronger First Amendment advocate than I am, but I fully recognize that there is a difference between the right of an ordinary citizen to express herself passionately and the right of someone to run for president, take the oath as president and then stand by the presidential seal in front of the white house and urge an angry mob to burn it down. To go to the Capitol and basically take it over.”

A group of House Democrats overseeing the impeachment case against former President Donald Trump laid out their argumentTuesday morning on the constitutionality of impeaching Trump for allegedly inciting the deadly Capitol riot during the counting of Electoral College votes on Jan. 6. Trump was impeached by the House on Jan. 13 on an incitement charge for his role in the attack that left at least five people dead and led to federal criminal charges against more than 90 individuals. He’s now set to stand trial in the Senate on Feb. 9... “The House memo dispatches that ‘protected speech’ argument neatly,” Harvard Law professor and constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, whose work is cited in the memo, told Yahoo News via email, “explaining why the protections for speech by private citizens have no place in the context of impeaching a former president and why the standards of Brandenburg v. Ohio, even if applicable, would be easily met by the way Trump actively aimed an angry mob at the Capitol, incited their attack on lawmakers and police, and then sat by and watched the havoc the mob wrought without lifting a finger to stop the devastation, something a private citizen would’ve been powerless to do but that a sitting president could easily have done.”

The Senate vote showing 45 Republican senators willing to brush off the impeachment trial makes it more imperative than ever to have a criminal trial on the merits in a setting where evidence can be taken seriously and spurious objections dismissed. Adding to the urgency of a criminal proceeding is former president Donald Trump’s decision to sack most of his legal team, headed by Karl S. “Butch” Bowers, with just a little more than a week before his Senate trial...A criminal trial could provide a severe deterrent for future presidents who attempt to retain power through violence. It is not enough to mouth the empty platitude that the ex-president’s behavior was “unacceptable” if there are no adverse consequences. Without punishment, his failed coup would remain an open invitation to future presidents to try the same sort of power grab. Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe observes, “Impeachment is about getting rid of officeholders who endanger the republic by abusing their powers, not about punishing them for their crimes. Punishment still must be meted out if the rule of law is to be respected and wrongdoers are to be held accountable.”

Former President Donald Trump’s last-minute remake of his impeachment defense team leaves little time to prepare for arguments that are scheduled to start next week in the Senate trial over whether he incited the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Trump announced on Sunday night that attorneys David Schoen and Bruce L. Castor Jr. will head his defense, after his previous lawyers led by Butch Bowers of South Carolina withdrew, with Trump’s initial response to the impeachment charge due Tuesday and the trial set to start Feb. 9...Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University professor who spoke on a Republican caucus call last week right before most senators voted that trying a president out of office is unconstitutional, said it’s reasonable for Trump to seek a trial delay to give new attorneys time to prepare if he wants it. But it’s not clear that Democrats would agree to such a request. Senate Democrats already pushed the start of the trial back two weeks to allow President Joe Biden some time to install his cabinet. Harvard University law professor Laurence Tribe said such a move would essentially allow Trump to “run out the clock” by retaining new lawyers. “No competent judge would let a defendant play this kind of endless game and essentially give the defendant control over the timing of the proceeding,” said Tribe, a frequent Trump critic.

The question of whether former president Donald Trump can be convicted at an impeachment trial now that he has left office is likely to be settled by political muscle rather than the Constitution, which is murky on the matter and provides support for those on both sides of the issue, experts said Wednesday. Although many legal scholars take the view that a president can be tried by the Senate even when he is no longer president, they acknowledge there is enough ambiguity in the Constitution for Republicans to embrace as reason not to convict Trump at his trial set to begin Feb. 9...Among those leading the arguments on both sides are legal heavyweights Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School scholar, and Luttig, the former judge. The two frequently exchange emails on constitutional issues, most recently about this subject, and express great admiration for each other even when they vigorously disagree. The Senate does not lose its power to hold an impeachment trial just because the official is no longer in office, Tribe said, in part because it has the authority to disqualify the person from holding future office. Although a powerful argument could be made that Congress cannot impeach a private citizen, he said, Trump was impeached by the House while still in office. If an official could only be disqualified while still in office, that person could avoid accountability by resigning just before a final conviction vote in the Senate, he said.

Bracing for the prospect of a likely acquittal, Senate Democrats are eyeing a rapid-fire impeachment trial for former president Donald Trump — as short as one week — while also contemplating alternatives such as censure that could attract more support from Republicans...Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia said he was likely to file a censure resolution that would serve as an alternative to convicting Trump on the impeachment charge...Kaine is pitching his censure resolution to Republicans as a potentially more politically palatable alternative to convicting Trump and barring him from future office. But he is also making the case to Democrats that his resolution would have much the same effect as a conviction, by condemning the former president and laying the foundation to keep him from returning to the presidency under the terms of the 14th Amendment...Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law professor, said invoking the 14th Amendment provision is “much more complex than some people assume” and said simply passing a resolution as Kaine is proposing would not be sufficient to bar Trump from office. “I worry about the cop-out of a condemnatory censure, which Senators shouldn’t be led to think gets them off the hook of having to convict the former president under the Article of Impeachment,” he wrote in an email.

Senate Republicans voted Tuesday for a measure that would have declared the impeachment proceedings against former President Donald Trump unconstitutional because he is no longer in office. The motion, by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was defeated by a vote of 55-45, showing that Democrats have an uphill climb to secure the 67 votes needed for a conviction. Among those who voted for the motion was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has said he is undecided whether to convict Trump and who worked on the trial calendar with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y...Democrats maintain that they have precedent on their side. While no president has been tried by the Senate after having left office, Secretary of War William Belknap was tried in the Senate in 1876 after he had already resigned. And other legal experts, such as Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe and University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck, say the trial is constitutional because one of the considerations for the Senate is whether to bar Trump from future federal office. Democrats note that Trump was impeached by the House while he was still in office, and they maintain that a trial is necessary to hold him accountable for what Schumer called "the most despicable thingany president has ever done," inciting a riot at the Capitol while a joint session of Congress was counting the Electoral College vote.

As part of the response to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Biden administration will treat white supremacist violence as a national security threat. White House press secretary Jen Psaki made this clear in a news briefing on Friday: “The Biden administration will confront this threat with the necessary resources and resolve,” she said...Despite analysis showing the rising threat of domestic terrorism, the previous administration declined to undertake a major initiative to study or address it...Conservative resistance to cracking down on such groups — ostensibly based on the fear that they would become targets (a telling indictment of the degree to which white supremacy has become part of right-wing rhetoric) — may subside given the attack on Congress and threats against former vice president Mike Pence. Constitutional scholar Laurence H. Tribe tells me, “This seems a sensible and urgently needed step to evaluate and address what we know has been a rising problem, one considerably more urgent than even international terrorism.” He adds, “To approach it systematically and on the basis of data rather than mere hunch and instinct looks like a refreshing signal of what the new administration portends.”

In his final full day in office, President Donald Trump is expected to issue a myriad of presidential pardons. Last week, CNN initially reported that Trump planned to pardon close to 100 people before leaving office. Trump already has issued pardons for his former aides, including former adviser Roger Stone, former campaign manager Paul Manafort and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Some have speculated that Trump will attempt to issue a self-pardon or secret pardons for his family and other aides...However, others believe that pardons were meant to be publicly issued and would not hold up as valid if challenged in a court of law. "I certainly can't say that they are clearly impermissible, but I can say that I think that there is at least a Constitutional cloud over them," Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe said. For one thing, they would be difficult to authenticate. "There would be no way to prove it was issued on a certain date in an official capacity," Tribe said. "If invoked at the time an indictment or prosecution is brought, that would open the possibility for a Constitutional test of whether secret pardons are permitted." Additionally, Tribe said the nature and purpose of pardons implies a public acknowledgment of wrongdoing and forgiveness. "They were supposed to be accompanied with either a confession of guilt or that they implied that the person who accepts the pardon is willing to publicly admit guilt," Tribe said. "And the fact that there's no indication in the discussion of the Constitution when the pardon power, which is already pretty sweeping and subject to abuse, could be hidden behind a veil of secrecy, I would argue that it's validity is up in the air."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected to send the article of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate later this week, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News -- a move that could kick off formal proceedings the next day and opening arguments on the Senate floor the following week. The timing of formal transmission from the House to the Senate is significant, as the Constitution dictates that the trial begins at 1 p.m. the following day. Pushing that procedural step back until after President-elect Joe Biden takes office -- back to Thursday or Friday -- would also give his administration at least a day or two to gain its footing as the Senate begins the balancing act of putting Trump on trial while starting to take up Biden's agenda...Some Democrats worry that Trump simply won't take part in the proceedings and that he'll adopt a similar posture to his administration's broad rejection of congressional oversight and subpoenas during his time in office. "I hope he is competently defended," Laurence Tribe, a Harvard University Law School professor who has advised Democrats on their efforts to impeach Trump, told ABC News. "Otherwise part of what he'll be able to say in claiming victimization is that he was made a pariah ... therefore the verdict was illegitimate -- just as the election wasn't legitimate." "I don't think it helps our history for him to be able to elaborate on that martyr story," Tribe said.

The second impeachment of President Donald Trump has concluded, not with a bang, but with a whimper. Whether it results in a Senate conviction or not, impeachment amounts to a feeble punishment for a man who will have left office anyway. While the forces of decency, democracy and good government prevailed in this impeachment vote, we should ask what gain this battle has wrought. A Senate debate will distract that body at a time when a new president critically needs it to confirm his Cabinet, and to approve a funding package to accelerate vaccinations and Covid-19 relief. Impeachment likely persuaded nobody; on all things Trumpian, it seems, virtually no American appears persuadable. What is needed, rather, is criminal prosecution...Experts appear more divided about whether a president could use the clemency power of Article II of the Constitution to pardon himself in anticipation of prosecution. On its face, nothing in the Constitution precludes a self-pardon. A 1974 internal U.S. Department of Justice memorandum raises doubts, however, invoking “the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case,” and has the concurrence of such constitutional experts as Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe. Only the Supreme Court can finally resolve the issue, but we must call the question; otherwise, the door will remain open to those who might seek to exploit this uncertainty for tyrannical ends.