Laurence Tribe

Trump attacked ousted Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch during her testimony, leading Democrats to accuse Trump of witness intimidation that could create another article of impeachment. Laurence Tribe tells Lawrence O'Donnell that Trump's tweets shows he needs to be the center of attention: "It's the way he melts down in the process of being impeached that ultimately will lead to a president's downfall."

President Donald Trump inserted himself directly into Friday’s public impeachment hearing, attacking former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch on Twitter during her live televised testimony before congressional investigators. The series of ill-advised tweets shocked legal experts, many of whom pointed out that the president’s statements constituted witness tampering and would likely be added to the eventual Articles of Impeachment.... Daily Trump critic Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe also weighed in on Trump’s tweets, noting that his conduct will likely find its way to the House’s Articles of Impeachment. “This Trump tweet is criminal witness intimidation. Glad [Rep. Adam Schiff] called it out in real time. This vicious attack on a witness during her testimony may chill weaker souls, but he won’t get away with it. It’ll be part of an Article of Impeachment for obstructing Congress,” Tribe tweeted.

Laurence Tribe on impeachment: It’s about time we pay attention to constitution. Ambassador William Taylor and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent painted a sobering portrait of a president using the power of his office to advance his personal political agenda by withholding aid from a foreign power.

Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe on Thursday dumped on Donald Trump’s political allies and defenders as he dissected the latest developments in the impeachment inquiry into the president. “I think it’s about time that people pay more attention to the Constitution and to the purposes of our democracy than to the trivial business of getting reelected,” Tribe told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews during a discussion on Trump’s pressuring of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate his potential 2020 Democratic rival Joe Biden allegedly in exchange for withheld military aid. “If your office is so important to you that you’re going to violate your oath and vote for someone who violates his oath every day and who uses the office of the presidency to enrich himself and to enhance his power, then I really think you are a pathetic excuse for a human being,” Tribe added.

President Donald Trump is taking the fight to keep his financial records secret from congressional investigators to the Supreme Court. However, there is no guarantee it will pick up the case and it could take months before any decisions are made, legal scholars say. On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit knocked back Trump's appeal against the court's earlier decision that his accountants Mazars must release several years of his financial records, including tax returns, to honor a subpoena by the House Oversight Committee. A majority of the judges voted in favor of upholding the previous ruling. But three judges dissented against that majority decision. The president's personal lawyer, Jay Sekulow, said he would now take the case up to the Supreme Court and petition for it to be heard there. "Sekulow and Trump's other private lawyers will have 90 days in which to file a petition for cert," Larry Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard, told Newsweek. "The Supreme Court typically takes several months to decide whether to grant or deny cert. In this case, I see very little reason to imagine the Court would want to grant a hearing, despite the dissents. But the exact timing and precise odds are anybody's guess."

In a last-minute move, Democrats are shifting their impeachment rhetoric and talking points just days before the first public hearings into President Trump’s handling of foreign policy in Ukraine. The televised hearings mark a crucial phase in an investigation conducted thus far behind closed doors, as Democrats seek to swing public opinion — and by extension, that of Republicans — behind the central inference of their impeachment inquiry: that Trump broke the law and should be removed from office...Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard University, suggested the Democrats’ references to a quid pro quo were a tactical mistake for a party hoping to sway public sentiment. And he welcomed the shift to more clearly defined terms. “It’s easier for the public to understand English-language concepts like ‘bribery’ and ‘extortion’ than it is for most people to plumb the meaning of the Latin phrase ‘quid pro quo,’ ” Tribe said Monday in an email, “and public comprehension is essential to the proper use of the impeachment power.” Tribe, a frequent Trump critic, rattled off a host of additional reasons he thinks the more explicit terms will prove more effective for Democrats taking their impeachment case public.

Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe explained that it has become obvious that President Donald Trump is using the Office of the Presidency for his own purposes. Speaking to MSNBC host Ari Melber on his impeachment special, Tribe explained that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) refused to authorize an impeachment inquiry until it became clear that Trump was using his office for political purposes. “He was taking hundreds of millions of dollars voted by Congress and withholding them from the Ukraine in an act of sheer extortion and soliciting what amounted to a bribe because he wanted Ukraine’s help, help against Joe Biden for 2020 and help in clearing him of colluding with Russia in 2016,” Tribe said.

White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’s last-minute effort to join a lawsuit that could determine whether senior administration officials testify in the impeachment inquiry was an unwelcome surprise to former top national security aides, highlighting internal divisions among President Trump’s advisers in the face of the probe. ... Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law expert at Harvard Law School, said Mulvaney’s last-minute move could be an attempt to give himself legal cover to put off the House demand. By attaching himself to the Kupperman case, Mulvaney could avoid having to testify in the House inquiry for months if the suit is appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. “I think he’s trying to be shielded from having to obey his legal duty to comply with an obviously valid subpoena,” Tribe said.

Professor Laurence Tribe speaks with Anderson Cooper.

According to several legal experts, the revised testimony on the Ukraine scandal by Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, is highly damaging to President Trump. In his new statement, Sondland admitted that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky knew he U.S. would withholding military aid until his country granted Trump’s request for an investigation of the company that employed Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden. This is a crucial piece of evidence suggesting that the U.S. president that committed a serious ethical violation, and perhaps a crime. Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe told Salon by email that Sondland's statement “contributes to the overwhelming evidence that President Trump abused his power and engaged in bribery and extortion by illegally conditioning the military aid Congress had voted for Ukraine upon President Zelensky‘s willingness to help him in the 2020 election by announcing an investigation into Hunter Biden."

The Post reports, “Former national security adviser John Bolton is willing to defy the White House and testify in the House impeachment inquiry about his alarm at the Ukraine pressure campaign if a federal court clears the way, according to people familiar with his views.” Nothing prevents Bolton from coming to testify about his knowledge of the Ukraine scandal. Other,current administration officials have been told not to testify based on a bogus absolute immunity theory. Nothing — other than Republican attacks — happens to them as a result of responding to a lawful subpoena. They face no “defiance of a ludicrous executive directive” jail...“It’s particularly ridiculous for Bolton to await some judicial ruling about his obligations to testify under oath to what he knows about a presidential abuse of power so grave that he described it to colleagues as akin to a ‘drug deal’ when other civil servants have risked their careers and endured presidential taunts and threats to speak truth to power in the face of an unprecedented White House order that they all clam up,”says constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe. He observes that Bolton’s "oath to support the U.S. Constitution should matter more to him than his loyalty to the person now occupying the White House and, frankly, his interest in maximizing the royalties from whatever tell-all book he plans to write."

Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe on Thursday warned that “the United States of America is in real danger” as he broke down the latest developments in the ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. “We’ve got a president who is willing to compromise our national security by hurting a country that is a buffer zone between an expanding Russia and the NATO alliance by undermining the Ukraine,” Tribe told CNN’s Anderson Cooper about the ongoing fallout from Trump’s July phone call with Ukraine’s president. During the call, Trump had requested his counterpart to dig up dirt on his  potential Democratic 2020 rival Joe Biden allegedly in exchange for the release of military aid.

We’ve known for several weeks that John Roberts, as the presiding officer in any impeachment trial, is likely to have a major role in deciding the fate of Donald Trump’s presidency. The past few days, though, have crystallized just how significant a part the chief justice will play; not just in the Senate trial itself, but in determining what evidence House investigators will be able to collect even before there is a vote on whether or not to impeach Donald Trump...What will it do to the court’s credibility if Roberts opts to let his court play defense for this president based on Calvinball-grade legal arguments about shooting people in the street? In regard to the lower courts, one might expect there to be some set of rules governing when and how the judicial branch decides to fast-track litigation with such major implications for our democracy and the rule of law. Harvard Law School constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe told me, however, that the decision to hasten or slow-walk vital litigation turns on nothing more than the temperament and preferences of individual district court and appeals court judges who happen to be assigned a case.

The White House tried to justify its refusal to comply with Democrats' subpoenas by claiming that their impeachment inquiry is unconstitutional. Laurence Tribe explains to Lawrence O'Donnell why that White House argument is "legally vacuous" and would rebuffed by the courts for putting the president above the law.

Since the impeachment inquiry into President Trump began, most Republicans in Congress have made the argument that the president’s decision to withhold military aid to Ukraine in exchange for investigating a political opponent was not a quid pro quo or an abuse of power. But after a partisan House vote last week opening up a public phase of the inquiry — and a parade of government officials who testified to Congress that there was a quid pro quo — some in Mr. Trump’s party are testing out a new refrain: Even if a quid pro quo existed, it is not grounds for impeachment. They are merely concerned...Laurence H. Tribe, a Harvard law professor and an author of “To End a Presidency,” a book on impeachment, said the gamble that the most vocal Republicans appeared to be taking was that Mr. Trump — who as a candidate boasted that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it — had succeeded in essentially saying “so what?” before...“I think the logic is the logic of the big lie,” Mr. Tribe said. “That if you repeat something often enough loudly enough to people who are not being critical in their analysis of what they’re hearing, you may just get away with it.”

Harvard Law Professor Laurence H. Tribe on Friday spoke with CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin in a wide-ranging discussion, beginning with Tribe’s formative academic years as a mathematician and ending with an in-depth discussion of President Donald Trump’s tumultuous tenure in office. Tribe, who wrote the 2018 book “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment” — which he co-authored with attorney Joshua Matz, the latest addition to House Democrats’ impeachment legal team — has made no secret of his opposition to President Trump. The constitutional scholar on Friday made his case for impeachment, addressing some of the common defenses against it as he went.

President Trump has sought to intimidate witnesses in the impeachment inquiry, attacking them as “Never Trumpers” and badgering an anonymous whistleblower. He has directed the White House to withhold documents and block testimony requested by Congress. And he has labored to publicly discredit the investigation as a “scam” overseen by “a totally compromised kangaroo court.” ... Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law scholar at Harvard Law School who has informally advised some Democratic House leaders, said Trump’s actions are unprecedented. “I know of no instance when a president subject to a serious impeachment effort, whether Andrew Johnson or Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton, has essentially tried to lower the curtain entirely — treating the whole impeachment process as illegitimate, deriding it as a ‘lynching’ and calling it a ‘kangaroo court,’” Tribe said.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed a resolution that formalizes the impeachment probe against President Trump. The resolution outlines the next steps of the inquiry, authorizing the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to conduct open hearings and the president and his attorneys to cross-examine witnesses. ... For a discussion of the significance of the resolution, Harvard law professor and constitutional expert Laurence Tribe, who's long called for Trump's impeachment, joined WBUR's Morning Edition.

The U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote Thursday on a resolution that moves its impeachment probe against President Trump into a new phase. The vote could clear the way for articles of impeachment against the president for allegedly withholding aid from Ukraine unless that country investigated Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's family. For a look at the significance of the move, Harvard law professor and constitutional expert Laurence Tribe joined WBUR's Morning Edition host Bob Oakes.

The Post reports, “House Democrats unveiled new procedures for the impeachment inquiry of President Trump on Tuesday, responding to Republican demands for due process by setting out rules for future public hearings delving into whether Trump should be removed from office.” This will be the House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam B. Schiff’s (D-Calif.) show...Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe tells me, “The procedures this resolution would put in place are well adapted to bringing the truth to light in a way that respects historical precedent, gives the president and his defenders a full and fair opportunity to challenge his accusers and to present his defense, gives members on both sides of the aisle an equal chance to test the evidence and finally gives the American people the opportunity they have been waiting for to decide whether the sitting president has shown himself to be a danger to the republic.”

The Post reports: “House Democrats said Monday that the House will vote Thursday to formalize procedures for the next phase of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump. Democrats said the move would ‘ensure transparency and provide a clear path forward’ as the inquiry continues.” Contrary to the claims of Republicans partisans and some sloppy reporting, this does not authorize the inquiry. The impeachment proceedings are already underway. The main purpose is to set forth how the inquiry will proceed and undercut Republican complaints of lack of transparency...So why bring this up now, especially after a court held in Democrats’ favor? One possibility is that in preparing an article of impeachment on obstruction of Congress, Pelosi does not want to leave a crack open whereby Trump’s lawyers would say, well, he had a good-faith belief the impeachment process was not officially underway. Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe approves of Pelosi’s move. “This resolution makes perfect sense now that the House leadership has wisely decided to forgo further judicial jockeying and to move expeditiously to public hearings,” he argues. “Calling the Trump administration’s bluff this way will make it clear that the continued stonewalling of the administration — and of those current and former officials who use the administration’s gag order as an excuse for seeking what amount to advisory judicial opinions on whether to comply with congressional subpoenas — is just a stalling tactic, not a good-faith effort to resolve conflicting obligations when confronted with a subpoena from Congress and a directive from the White House to defy that subpoena.”