Laurence Tribe

Laurence Tribe, a legal scholar at Harvard University who specializes in constitutional law, told Salon on Sunday that President Donald Trump "has violated yet another law" by tweeting the name of a man believed by some to be the whistleblower who drew attention to the Ukraine scandal. "If by 'legal ramifications' you mean to ask me whether Donald Trump has violated yet another law, my answer is yes," Tribe told Salon by email when asked whether there could be legal ramifications to the president's tweeting. "The Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998 (ICWPA) outlaws actions by government officials or agencies that directly or indirectly encourage retaliatory actions against employees who legitimately perform a whistleblower role in the intelligence community, as the whistleblower in this case clearly did regarding a matter of urgent concern, as determined by the Inspector General." Tribe added that Trump "violated the letter and spirit of the ICWPA" by sharing a name that he held to be that of the whistleblower with over 60 million people on Twitter "for vengeful reasons."

Maybe President Trump has not been impeached after all, or at least not yet. Impeachment happens, according to Noah Feldman, a Harvard law professor, only when the House transmits the articles of impeachment to the Senate. So “technically speaking,” he said, “the president still hasn’t been impeached.” That idea has left much of the legal academy unconvinced, including Laurence H. Tribe, one of Professor Feldman’s colleagues at Harvard. “The argument is textually bizarre, historically inaccurate, structurally misguided and functionally misleading,” Professor Tribe said. Professor Feldman was one of three constitutional scholars to testify in favor of impeachment before the House Judiciary Committee this month.

President Trump lashed out Friday at Democrats and an evangelical magazine that has called for his removal from office, as the timing and scope of his impeachment trial in the Senate remained in limbo and he prepared to head to Florida for the holidays. ...Republicans have seized on a notion advanced by a law professor called by Democrats to testify during the impeachment inquiry that technically Trump would not be “impeached” if the House does not send articles of impeachment to the Senate. Impeachment as contemplated by the Constitution does not consist merely of the vote by the House, but of the process of sending the articles to the Senate for trial,” Harvard University law professor Noah Feldman wrote in a Bloomberg column on Thursday. “Both parts are necessary to make an impeachment under the Constitution ... If the articles are not transmitted, Trump could legitimately say that he wasn’t truly impeached at all.” Feldman’s argument received pushback from other legal scholars, including Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard. In a tweet on Thursday night, Tribe said Feldman is “making a clever but wholly mistaken point” about the possibility that Trump won’t be impeached. “Under Art. I, Sec. 2, Clause 5, he was impeached on Dec 18, 2019. He will forever remain impeached. Period,” Tribe wrote.

Sen. Schumer said he’s hoping to get some Republican Senators to join him in asking for witnesses and documents in Trump’s impeachment trial. Laurence Tribe tells Lawrence O’Donnell that “the evidence supporting the impeachment articles is extremely strong” but adds that there are no good reasons not to hear from additional firsthand witnesses in the Senate trial and thinks it will be a hard sell from some vulnerable Republican Senators.

MSNBC anchor Lawrence O’Donnell interviewed constitutional law expert Laurence Tribe on Thursday about “the most influential op-ed piece yet about impeachment. On Monday, The Washington Post published Tribe’s op-ed titled, “Don’t let Mitch McConnell conduct a Potemkin impeachment trial.” Tribe, who was taught at Harvard Law for half a century and has argued three-dozen cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, suggested Speaker Nancy Pelosi delay transmitting the articles of impeachment to the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had a plan to quickly dispose of the articles of impeachment just approved by the House: He would hold a two-week sham trial without any witnesses, and then the Senate Republican majority would acquit President Trump, despite the overwhelming weight of evidence showing that he is guilty as charged of abusing his power and obstructing Congress. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), acting on an idea suggested by Harvard Law Professor Laurence H. Tribe in a Post op-ed, has thrown a spanner into the works by refusing to appoint impeachment managers until there is some guarantee of a fair trial in the Senate.

Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, a frequent critic of President Trump, argued Wednesday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., should not send the articles of impeachment against President Trump to the Senate and claimed that it was unconstitutional for the Senate to demand the articles "immediately." "Senate rules requiring the House to 'immediately' present its articles of impeachment to the Senate clearly violate the constitutional clause in Article I giving each house the sole power to make its own rules," Tribe tweeted on Wednesday. "It’s up to the House when and how to prosecute its case in the Senate," he added, just hours before House Democrats voted to approve two articles of impeachment.

After the U.S. House of Representatives voted Wednesday to impeach President Donald Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the articles of impeachment may temporarily be withheld from the U.S. Senate. The idea of delaying—or even withholding transmittal to the Senate—has been pitched by Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, who advised the House Judiciary Committee on the impeachment process, the Washington Postreports.

Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe on Thursday explained why House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) decision to delay sending the articles of impeachment of President Donald Trump to the Senate is smart. Tribe, appearing on MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” told host Lawrence O’Donnell he believed Pelosi was handling the situation “just brilliantly.” In an op-ed for The Washington Post published Monday, Tribe suggested the House vote to impeach Trump over the Ukraine scandal, but then hold off on transmitting the articles. He predicted it would strengthen Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) hand “in bargaining over trial rules” with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) ― amid concerns of potential bias in a trial by Republicans ― because McConnell and Trump want “to get this whole business behind them.” McConnell has vowed to continue working with Trump’s defense team for the trial. O’Donnell on Thursday asked Tribe if this is “where you hoped we would be at this stage after passing the articles of impeachment?” “Exactly,” Tribe responded. “I hoped that my op-ed would encourage a dialogue generated by the fact that for the first time we have a majority leader who is going to be essentially the foreman of the jury and who promises to have his fingers crossed when he takes the oath.”

Moments after a historic vote to impeach President Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that the House could at least temporarily withhold the articles from the Senate - a decision, she suggested, that could depend on how the other chamber chooses to conduct its trial on Trump's removal...The notion has been most prominently advocated by Laurence H. Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor who has advised the House Judiciary Committee on the impeachment process. In a recent Washington Post op-ed, he wrote that "the public has a right to observe a meaningful trial rather than simply learn that the result is a verdict of not guilty."

Our Supreme Court will hear Donald Trump’s claim that if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue police could not investigate him. Yes, these are crazy times. In fighting a New York City investigation into whether Trump is a serial tax cheat, one of his lawyers argued in October that should he murder someone the authorities could not even collect evidence. However, lawyer George Consovoy added, Trump could be prosecuted after he leaves office...Indictment and trial are different from investigation. There is a reasonable argument that a sitting president cannot be tried criminally in a state court. The argument is that a  single state or county could tie up the federal government, undoing our Constitution’s scheme. Professor Laurence Tribe of Harvard, arguably our most eminent Constitutional scholar, says a president can be indicted, especially for a heinous criminal offense such as murder. There is fairly broad agreement among leading Constitutional scholars, and even Trump’s own lawyer Consovoy, that a president can be tried once he leaves office.

Some House Democrats are pushing Speaker Nancy Pelosi to withhold the articles of impeachment that are expected to be approved by the House Wednesday, an idea that has been championed by Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe. The notion of impeaching Trump but holding the articles in the House, which could delay a trial in the Senate for months, has gained traction among some of the political left... "Senate rules requiring the House to 'immediately' present its articles of impeachment to the Senate clearly violate the constitutional clause in Article I giving each house the sole power to make its own rules. It's up to the House when and how to prosecute its case in the Senate," Tribe said.

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.’