Laurence Tribe

Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to commit Wednesday to delivering articles of impeachment to the Senate, citing concerns about an unfair trial on removing President Donald Trump from office. Senior Democratic aides said the House was “very unlikely” to take the steps necessary to send the articles to the Senate until at least early January, a delay of at least two weeks and perhaps longer...Pelosi’s remarks follow similar comments from House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, the second-ranking lawmaker in the House, who said Democrats must discuss a last-ditch gambit to delay sending articles of impeachment to the Senate...Hoyer said Democratic colleagues have approached him in recent days, citing an op-ed by constitutional lawyer Laurence Tribe in which he calls on Democrats to delay sending impeachment articles to the Senate until McConnell agrees to run a fairer process. “Under the current circumstances, such a proceeding would fail to render a meaningful verdict of acquittal,” Tribe wrote. Notably, House Judiciary Committee Democrats huddled with Tribe earlier this month as they practiced behind closed doors for their series of impeachment hearings.

On Wednesday, Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California and the Speaker of the House, opened the floor debate in an irreconcilable House of Representatives on the impeachment of President Donald Trump...The final tally will also exhibit anew the country’s unrelenting political divisions. In all likelihood, Trump will be acquitted next month, in a similarly one-sided, partisan manner, in the Senate. It is a depressingly predictable set of outcomes and one that will, inevitably, raise questions about both the point of the entire exercise and the wisdom of Pelosi’s decision to pursue impeachment in the first place...For all the second-guessing of Pelosi’s actions, it is difficult to conceive of a responsible alternative path to the one she chose...impeachment cannot function properly in an age of hyper-partisanship. “To succeed, an impeachment must transcend party conflict,” Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz write in their book “To End a Presidency.” “Since the 1990s, however, impeachment has become increasingly entangled with the daily grind of partisan politics. As a result, the president’s political opponents are quick to frame their major disagreements in terms of impeachment. The president’s supporters, in turn, are quick to dismiss even legitimate impeachment talk as a partisan conspiracy to nullify the last election.”

Republicans have handed Democrats a political gift by making it clear they plan on acquitting President Trump after the most minimal Senate impeachment trial possible. The question is whether Democrats can seize this opportunity. In a divided Congress, House Democrats control one important weapon...they can withhold the articles of impeachment from the Senate — meaning that no impeachment trial can occur until the Republican Senate leadership agrees to some approximation of a fair and thorough process...Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe recently tweeted that if McConnell “rejects these reasonable ground rules and insists on a non-trial, the House should consider treating that as a breach of the Senate’s oath and withholding the Articles until the Senate reconsiders.” He later clarified in a follow-up tweet that “by ‘withholding’ the Articles I don’t mean not voting for them — I mean voting for them but holding off on transmitting them to the Senate.” Tribe elaborated on this idea further in an email to Salon, comparing this process to a corrupt trial in criminal court: "Imagine this scenario: A prosecutor about to obtain a grand jury indictment learns that the foreman of the trial jury (whose members, for purposes of this thought experiment, we’ll have to assume are known in advance, as is the case with the Senate though not in the typical criminal case) has threatened to let the accused decide how the trial will be conducted — and has intimated that it will be a 'trial' in name only, one orchestrated in close coordination with defense counsel. Other key jurors also announce that they don’t intend to listen to any evidence but have already made up their minds to acquit."

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe: For some time now, I have been emphasizing the duty to impeach this president for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress regardless of what the Senate might end up doing. Now that President Trump’s impeachment is inevitable, and now that failing to formally impeach him would invite foreign intervention in the 2020 election and set a dangerous precedent, another option seems vital to consider: voting for articles of impeachment but holding off for the time being on transmitting them to the Senate. This option needs to be taken seriously now that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has announced his intention to conduct not a real trial but a whitewash, letting the president and his legal team call the shots. Such an approach could have both tactical and substantive benefits. As a tactical matter, it could strengthen Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) hand in bargaining over trial rules with McConnell because of McConnell’s and Trump’s urgent desire to get this whole business behind them. On a substantive level, it would be justified to withhold going forward with a Senate trial.

Democrats and President Trump have finally found something they agree on — but a powerful Republican may block their dream from coming true. With the House expected to impeach Trump this week, all eyes will turn to the Senate, where the president is set to face a trial in the new year. And both Democrats and the president, for their own reasons, are hoping for a full-blown trial, replete with bombshell testimony that would keep Americans glued to their TV sets. ... “The last thing they want is something that really exposes the details of how Trump abuses his power. They really don’t want to risk that,” said Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University who privately advised House Democrats when they drew up the impeachment articles earlier this month.

Americans were gripped when news broke in September that an anonymous intelligence officer had reported concerns to Congress that President Donald Trump seemed to be trying to use the power of his presidency to exchange investigations into his political rivals for U.S. support of Ukraine. The consequences of the whistleblower’s actions have dominated headlines for months, but in many ways, the complaint, which may lead to Trump’s impeachment by the House this month, was a historical moment that was centuries in the making. ...However, critical gaps remained. While the First Amendment could theoretically protect a government employee who wants to voice irritations with something outside of the purview of their job, it would not necessarily protect them if they spoke out about topics related to their work. “The First Amendment rights of public employees — generally, bureaucrats, civil servants and others — are somewhat limited, because the theory is that although they have rights of expression, they don’t automatically have a right to the job that they hold,” says Laurence Tribe, a prominent Constitutional law professor at Harvard. “If there’s somebody in the [Environmental Protection Agency] who decides that climate change is this grave problem, contrary to the views of the current Administration… They could be fired for that.”

In an interview with MSNBC Ari Melber, Constitutional law expert Laurence Tribe said: "If Trump is impeached "it will be the first time that any president who has been impeached is on trial before a Senate of his own party."

Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe explained Friday why he believes Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) plan to coordinate with President Donald Trump’s defense team in a Senate impeachment trial may backfire. ...Tribe told MSNBC’s Ari Melber the next day on “The Beat” that it was “disgusting” that McConnell looked like he “is going to conduct this trial as though he’s a member of the defense team.” “You know, it’s an ancient principle — centuries-old, actually over a millennium old — that you can’t be a judge on your own case, and effectively, to allow Donald Trump to call the shots violates that principle,” said the scholar, who has been advising top House Democrats on the impeachment process.

Donald Trump appears to have the full support of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, leading many to believe that an impeachment trial in the Senate could never result in a conviction. Laurence Tribe, constitutional scholar and author of, ‘To End a Presidency,’ joins Joy Reid to discuss saying, ‘I do think the Democrats should press hard to make this a real trial.’

On Cuomo Prime Time, Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, who consulted with the Democrats on drafting the articles of impeachment against President Trump, explains why they did not include bribery and extortion in the articles.

In the days before articles of impeachment were unveiled against President Donald Trump, Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot claimed that a Trump impeachment would be the first of its kind. ..."Every scholar concedes that the presence or absence of a federal crime is beside the point when it comes to constitutional high crimes and misdemeanors," said Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, co-author of "To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment. "

It has often been observed that one of President Trump’s biggest allies in the impeachment battle is Fox News — that if Richard Nixon had enjoyed the benefit of such a powerful purveyor of propaganda, he wouldn’t have been driven from office. ... It’s not. As Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz write, the framers designated the Senate for impeachment trials to create an “extraordinary court” composed of “the nation’s leading statesmen,” one up to the gravity of weighing “great offenses against the people.” The Senate would not be prone to factional pressure (senators have six-year terms) and would be independent of the president.

When you say someone has “no case,” it is usually meant figuratively, as in “they have a weak legal or factual position.” In the case of President Trump, Senate Republicans are making it clear that he literally has no case, no defense. ... Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, who has provided advice to House Democrats, tells me, “In a manner of speaking, perhaps this witness-free drama would be a ‘trial,’ but it wouldn’t be a trial as any ordinary speaker of English would use that word.” He adds, “True, under Nixon v. U.S., the Supreme Court wouldn’t interfere with the Senate’s determination, in its ‘sole power to try’ impeachments, that such an evidence-free proceeding constitutes a ‘trial.’ But reasonable people would surely know better.” He concludes, “The undeniable fact that the Supreme Court would let the Senate get away with such a fake ‘trial’ does not mean that it would actually comply with the genuine sense and basic purpose of the Constitution.”

Constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe discusses the theory of the case against Donald Trump amid the House’s consideration of the articles of impeachment.

Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe on Wednesday took apart a key Republican argument against the impeachment of President Donald Trump over the Ukraine scandal. Tribe, appearing on MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes” said some Republicans were “missing the point” by claiming abuse of power (one of two articles of impeachment that House Democrats have released against Trump, the other being obstruction of Congress) is “not a crime.” “It is the highest crime against the Constitution,” said Tribe. “And in this case the impeachment articles are carefully written to show the aggregating circumstances.” “This isn’t just using the president’s power to benefit himself,” Tribe added. “But it’s doing that in a way that endangers our national security and that corrupts the electoral process by inviting foreign involvement.” Tribe, who advised the House Judiciary Committee on how to draft the articles of impeachment, earlier explained why the articles were “the classic high crimes and misdemeanors.”

On Tuesday, Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives announced that they would move forward with two articles of impeachment — involving abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — against President Donald Trump...Those two articles, in the words of Laurence Tribe, the eminent Harvard Law professor and constitutional expert, “charge President Trump with massive crimes against the Constitution and against the American people.” Tribe shared his thoughts on the House Judiciary Committee’s proposed articles with Salon by email on Tuesday morning, saying they lay out the most serious abuses of power ever alleged against a sitting president. "The abuses of power they charge, including unforgivable and ongoing obstruction of congressional efforts to invoke the impeachment power to hold the President accountable to his Oath of Office, with ‘actions . . . consistent with [his] previous efforts to undermine United States Government investigations into foreign interference with United States elections’ in 2016, are the most serious ever charged against any sitting president. And the evidence supporting the two charges, which the Articles clearly and unambiguously summarize, is so overwhelming that only an unwillingness or inability to face the facts could lead anyone to conclude that President Trump is innocent of the accusations soberly leveled in the Articles."

Days after three out of four prominent legal scholars agreed at a congressional hearing that it’s been shown that President Donald Trump committed impeachable offenses, hundreds of legal scholars–and counting–have signed their names on an open letter to Congress. The letter was published Friday on Medium by the Protect Democracy Project, which styles itself as a nonpartisan, nonprofit group “dedicated to fighting attacks, from at home and abroad, on our right to free, fair, and fully informed self-government.” It’s reminiscent of a letter signed by hundreds of former federal prosecutors months ago, which said that Trump would have been charged for obstructing the Mueller Probe if he wasn’t the president. ... Many of the 500-plus names signed on this letter are familiar: Harvard Law Prof. Laurence Tribe, Vermont Law Professor Jennifer Taub, Associate Professor of Law at Fordham University Zephyr Teachout, Fordham Professor of Law Jed Shugerman, UC Berkeley’s Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law Erwin Chemerinsky, George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School Prof. J.W. Verret, and University of Alabama School of Law Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Law Joyce Vance, to name a few.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe: Of particular interest to me in this week’s House impeachment hearing was a moment when the chief counsel for the Republicans read aloud a quote about the dangers of a purely partisan, policy-based impeachment of a sitting president. This was from page 140 of my book with Joshua Matz, “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment.” The passage continued by describing the even greater dangers posed by a purely partisan, personality-driven refusal to impeach and remove a president who has clearly committed “high crimes and misdemeanors.” But the Republican counsel left out that part. After weeks of House impeachment hearings that resume Monday, Republican defenders of President Donald Trump have contented themselves with pointless, time-wasting calls for roll call votes; baseless complaints about the process, which was the most protective of a sitting president in the nation’s history; and deliberate distortions of what others had written or said. It all amounted to nonsense in the face of a deadly serious matter.

In a somber six minute address to the nation, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that the House of Representatives would begin drafting impeachment articles against the President of the United States because he violated his oath of office, and compromised US national security. In interview on Hardball with Chris Matthews, Laurence Tribe discussesTrump dismantling checks and balances.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe: As the House of Representatives moves toward formulating articles of impeachment, it is vital that the options on the table not be misframed. It’s a dangerously false choice to think that the House Judiciary Committee must either adopt a broad, kitchen-sink approach or take a narrow, laser-focused perspective. Yes, narrow is better than broad for the purposes of focus and public understanding. But narrow mustn’t mean myopic. What makes President Trump uniquely dangerous is not that he has committed a single terrible act that meets the Constitution’s definition of an impeachable offense. Neither Russia-gate nor Ukraine-gate was a one-night stand, and the obstruction of justice that enabled Trump to get away with asking for and benefiting from Russia’s intervention in the 2016 election is of a piece with his defiance of congressional investigations that might enable him to get away with demanding Ukraine’s intervention in 2020.

Law professor Jonathan Turley, Republicans’ witness testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, did not make an impressive case against impeachment. He blatantly contradicted his position pre-President Trump that a criminal violation was not required for impeachment. Moreover, his main argument, namely that the House was moving too fast, leaves open the question as to whether in a few weeks or a month he might support impeachment. Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe gave Turley poor marks, commenting on Twitter that Turley’s “call for solid evidence was a truism. He gave no reason at all to regard the evidence gathered by [Rep. Adam B. Schiff] as insufficient to establish impeachable offenses.” Tribe also tweeted that Turley made a fatal error in pointing out a “French mistress” would be a “thing of value” in a bribery case. Tribe observed, “Fake dirt on Biden was of way more value to Trump than any number of French (or Russian) mistresses. [Turley] has cooked Trump’s French goose.”