Laurence Tribe

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 release of the astonishing transcript of the call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky, Democrats have, as one would expect, zeroed in on the multiple legal problems Trump created for himself. ... The Justice Department is trying to deny Barr has any role in this fiasco. (“An initial Justice Department statement on Barr’s role issued at the same moment the call notes were made public seemed only to rule out the attorney general being asked to work with Ukraine on such a probe, but a subsequent clarification broadened the denial to cover any presidential request to Barr to launch an inquiry into Biden.”) Even if this is true, the Justice Department found there was nothing wrong with Trump’s conduct. Are we to believe Barr didn’t know about that either? Constitutional scholar Larry Tribe tells me, “It’s inconceivable that Barr didn’t know, and the decision to treat the president’s manifestly criminal conversation with Ukraine’s leader, a mix of bribery and extortion, as not worthy of a referral for further investigation seems to me inexplicable unless one assumes either corrupt motives or gross stupidity or both.”

An op-ed by Laurence H. Tribe: The White House’s blanket stonewalling of the House impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump isn’t just deeply troubling or further indirect evidence of the president’s underlying abuse of public power for private gain. It signals another clear ground for his impeachment: obstruction of Congress. Article III of the Nixon articles of impeachment provides the closest precedent to what Trump did here: He directed the State Department to prevent Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, from testifying about what his texts revealed to corroborate the whistleblower complaint about a scheme to withhold military aid in order to extort Ukraine into meddling in the 2020 election. The White House counsel followed up by telling House leaders there would be no cooperation with an inquiry he called illegitimate and unfair.

... John Dean, the former Chief White House Counsel to Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal, said Trump’s actions were contradictory to 230 years of American legal traditions. “URGENT: Trump wants to end America sovereignty by allowing foreign governments to help him win. It is against the law and 230 years of practice,” Dean Tweeted. “He wants American voters to choose elected leaders beholden to foreign powers, not Americans. The act of a dictator!,” he added. ... Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe’s reaction invoked a similar tone. “So now Trump is openly asking CHINA to go after the Bidens!,” Tribe Tweeted. “He’s poking the nation in the eye and daring us to hold him accountable for repeatedly violating American law and sovereignty. We have no choice but to remove him if we want to preserve our country.”

President Donald Trump has encouraged another foreign country to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, this time publicly calling on China to look into the 2020 Democratic frontrunner—a move legal experts say is "still illegal." ... Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe told Newsweek that Trump is "proceeding on the premise that he can get away with murder if he commits it often enough and in front of everybody. It's a daring strategy and one we can't let him pull off if we care about our country and want to have a legal system that applies to everyone."

Since the Democrats gained control of the House, the Trump administration has taken the most extreme position on congressional oversight in American history: In essence, it has argued that no demand from Congress, for information about anything, to anyone in the executive branch, is binding on the president. While many presidents have struggled with the reach of congressional oversight, this administration has been particularly defiant. ... As I wrote on Tuesday, the beginning of a formal impeachment inquiry should strengthen Congress’s hand as it seeks court enforcement of its demands for information. But should Congress even pursue such requests? Laurence Tribe, a professor at Harvard Law School, (whose recent book, To End a Presidency, co-written with Joshua Matz, explores many political and legal aspects of impeachment) told me in an email: The expectation that the evidence thereby made available will be explosive makes the impeachment process more difficult in circumstances like this, where the publicly known facts already justify a conclusion that the president committed high crimes and misdemeanors. That creates something of a paradox. The way in which a formal impeachment inquiry makes potentially incriminating evidence much more readily available tends to raise expectations and indirectly raises the bar for what it takes to impeach a president who abuses his powers for personal gain.

The percentage of Americans in favor of impeachment is increasing — quickly. It has gone from a clear minority view to a majority or plurality in recent polling. Part of that progress is directly attributable to President Trump acting more unhinged by the day — dishing out profanity, threatening the whistleblower and accusing House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) of treason. He sounds like a wounded animal howling in pain. But some of the credit goes to Democrats, who have a much better hand to play than they did in the Russia investigation and have learned from experience. ...Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe agrees. “I think the Intelligence Committee is doing exactly what the situation calls for by treating the refusals by [Attorney General William P.] Barr and [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo to let people testify as obstruction of Congress plain and simple,” he says. “If the Trump cabinet members or other officials want to go down the path of the third Article of Impeachment against Richard Nixon, that’s a choice the Democratic committee chairs are sensibly leaving to them. The chairs would play into the hands of the stonewalling Trump administration by taking Trump officials to court to seek orders compelling testimony or document production or to enforce subpoenas.” He concludes, “The days for those litigation strategies are now long since behind us.”

Constitutional scholar and Harvard Law Professor, Laurence Tribe, explains why the impeachment of President Trump is warranted and the path the House should take in drafting articles of impeachment. He speaks to Bloomberg’s June Grasso.

When Representative Adam B. Schiff was a Harvard Law School student in the 1980s, the campus was bitterly divided. Student protests erupted over apartheid in South Africa, the lack of diversity on the faculty, and the long line of polarizing speakers — including Jerry Falwell, Jesse Jackson, and Phyllis Schlafly — who trooped through campus. Old-guard faculty, meanwhile, were warring with a new crop of professors who wanted students to see the law as part of an oppressive status quo. ... Schiff learned constitutional law from Laurence H. Tribe, a veteran Harvard law professor who also taught Barack Obama. Schiff said that when he and his friends would see Tribe in Harvard Square, “we would literally genuflect.” Tribe eventually hired Schiff to be one of his student research assistants. “He was very similar to what he is like now – extremely brilliant, very well organized, very thoughtful, and cautious,” Tribe recalled this week.

It could also be grounds for impeachment, according to Harvard Law professor John Coates, who responded to the president’s tweet with a little bit of constitutional law. "This tweet is itself an independent basis for impeachment - a sitting president threatening civil war if Congress exercises its constitutionally authorized power." So far, no congressional lawmakers have commented publicly over whether Coates’ legal opinion is a path worth pursuing. But fellow Harvard Law faculty member Laurence Tribe did support the idea in theory ― though he suggested it may not be practical. I agree with @jciv here, though this is far from the strongest ground for impeachment because it’s much too easy to dismiss as typical Trumpian bloviating, not to be taken seriously OR literally.

A president, his congressional opponents, foreign leaders, and the U.S. Supreme Court first tangled over executive privilege toward the end of George Washington’s first term. They are almost certainly headed for a collision again in 2019. ...Impeachment strengthens Congress’s hand in these disputes—just ask Presidents Washington, Andrew Johnson, Tyler, or Polk. Still, Congress isn’t in the clear; the Trump administration will likely continue fighting to preserve its privileges, real and imagined. The Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe told me in an email that “the law and history make clear that a formal impeachment inquiry maximizes the willingness of courts to release essential information requested by congressional committees engaged in that inquiry.”

People in President Donald Trump’s orbit are already suggesting they may defy cooperating with House Democrats’ impeachment investigation. Most notably, Rudy Giuliani has claimed he has to “consider” whether to comply with it. On MSNBC’s “All In” Monday, Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe offered a stark warning to Trump’s team: This isn’t like the previous battles with Democrats in court. This will move fast — and steamroller anyone who gets in the way.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe: There is now powerful evidence that President Trump committed impeachable offenses by soliciting (and all but coercing) Ukraine’s president to interfere with the 2020 presidential election. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has confirmed that the House will move swiftly to investigate this threat to democracy, national security, and the separation of powers. The first stages of that impeachment inquiry are already underway. It’s therefore important to think ahead about what should happen as the House inquiry unfolds — especially in the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees, chaired respectively by Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler. If the House is going to impeach the president, it better have a plan.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe: There is now powerful evidence that Donald Trump committed impeachable offenses by using his foreign policy and military powers to solicit (and all but coerce) Ukraine’s president to interfere with the 2020 presidential election. Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, has confirmed that the House will move swiftly to investigate this threat to democracy, national security, and the separation of powers.  The first stages of that impeachment inquiry are already underway. It’s therefore important to think ahead about what should happen as the House inquiry unfolds – especially in the House intelligence and judiciary committees, chaired respectively by Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler. If the House is going to impeach the president, it better have a plan. This may seem obvious, but it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. Each passing day brings new revelations about the depth of Trump’s abuses, and the involvement of senior officials in fomenting or concealing them. Trump and his allies have responded by seeking to daze and disorient the public; they apparently hope to gaslight their way past high crimes and misdemeanors. With so many fires being set, attention is focused on the latest breaking news.

Ever since the revelation in the summer of 2016 that Russia was hacking the Democratic National Committee to help elect Donald Trump, his critics have been searching for evidence that he is loyal to Russia. We still don’t know the full story of President Trump’s ties with Moscow; an FBI counterintelligence investigation is apparently still going on. But from what we know, it’s a mistake to imagine that Trump is loyal to any country — whether the United States or Russia. His only loyalty is to himself. His policy is not “America First.” It is Trump First. ... Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe tells me the current Supreme Court “wouldn’t regard U.S. v. Nixon as controlling,” both because the court is now more conservative and because (unlike in 1974) there is no ongoing criminal prosecution of presidential aides that requires the documents. But Tribe suggests that the transcripts may come out anyway: “Now that impeachment is all but inevitable, the sinking ship will spring one leak after another.”

President Donald Trump's tweets denouncing Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff were "terribly irresponsible thing" according to a military expert. On Sunday, Trump lashed out against Schiff, who heads up the House Intelligence Committee, accusing the Californian Congressman of "Fraud & Treason." ... Laurence Tribe, a legal scholar and Carl M. Loeb University Professor at the Harvard Law School, called it "a grave abuse of his bully pulpit," describing Trump as "a menace to our democracy."

The Democrats don’t have a stellar recent record of conducting congressional hearings. They couldn’t figure out how to respond effectively to Brett Kavanaugh’s righteous anger or to ask some of the probing follow-up questions that his testimony raised. Democrats also struggledthis year to turn hearings on the Russia scandal into the kind of compelling television that would move public opinion...I am glad to see that the party has given a central role to Adam Schiff of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He’s a much more effective questioner and speaker than most members of the judiciary or oversight committees...Schiff “is focused like a laser on national security. That’s at the heart of why Trump must be impeached. He endangers the nation for his own benefit,” Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School wrote this week.

President Donald Trump’s decision not to release his tax returns in 2016 has spurred battles coast-to-coast on the state and federal level. Two states have passed laws in response to his refusal, which he has said is because he is under IRS audit. And Congressional Democrats have requested and subpoenaed his returns, saying they need them to assess how the IRS audits presidents. Those efforts have brought unique legal battles, and the outcomes could determine whether lawmakers or the public are able to scrutinize the president’s financial activity...“The California law does not add an additional ‘qualification’ because any candidate can easily comply with it merely by disclosing readily available and obviously relevant information,” said Laurence H. Tribe, a professor at Harvard Law School who focuses on constitutional issues. A free speech question is whether California could be seen as forcing Trump and other candidates to speak, in a certain sense, by producing their returns, said Lawrence Lessig, also a professor at Harvard Law School...“The idea that it’s not constitutional because it doesn’t serve a legitimate legislative purpose is just crazy talk,” Lessig said. While politics will always play a role in the decisions of lawmakers, Congress “certainly has the right to police the integrity of the executive branch of the president,” he said. That assessment fits into the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, according to Howard Abrams, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School who focuses on tax issues. “Historically the Supreme Court has been reluctant to invalidate legislative action based on bad intent because if it could be done with good intent, they’ll just re-pass the law with a different record,” he said.

The Democrats don’t have a stellar recent record of conducting congressional hearings. They couldn’t figure out how to respond effectively to Brett Kavanaugh’s righteous anger or to ask some of the probing follow-up questions that his testimony raised. Democrats also struggled this year to turn hearings on the Russia scandal into the kind of compelling television that would move public opinion. ... Schiff “is focused like a laser on national security. That’s at the heart of why Trump must be impeached. He endangers the nation for his own benefit,” Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School wrote this week.

The White House memo reconstructing a July phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky landed on the internet on Wednesday like a dress that is either clearly blue and black or clearly white and gold, depending on the viewer. ...We asked a group of legal experts what to make of it all. ... "The phone call ‘clearly establishes high crimes and misdemeanors’ " Laurence H. Tribe is a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School. The White House’s reconstruction of the phone call clearly establishes high crimes and misdemeanors, even if no further evidence were available. It shows a president responding to a desperate request by an ally for military assistance that he is secretly withholding by indicating that he might be able to help but—and his use of the word “though” is telling—he would appreciate the ally’s help in going after the former vice president and his son. ... Trump revealed ‘his intent to use U.S. government resources and power to further his personal agenda’ Jennifer Taub is the Bruce W. Nichols visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School. Placed in its full context, this partial summary of this single 30-minute phone conversation between Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky provides compelling evidence of an impeachable offense. Remember at the time of the call, President Trump was withholding $250 million in military aid to Ukraine. Furthermore, this document itself states it is not a literal transcript, but based on “notes and recollections.”

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe: Let us count the ways. The White House readout of President Donald Trump’s phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shows that the American president has committed a multitude of high crimes and misdemeanors, all of them impeachable. Even without considering the many prior offenses that were surfaced in the Mueller report and in the special counsel’s prosecutions of numerous Trump allies and associates, including in the Southern District of New York, this readout — which must be the least incriminating version the White House could compose despite its remarkable skills at shading the truth or falsifying it altogether — is utterly devastating. The “high crimes and misdemeanors” that the readout reveals — to use the Constitution’s term for impeachable offenses beyond “treason” and “bribery” (both of which the readout comes close to establishing) — begin with Trump abusing the foreign policy powers entrusted to the president by Article II in order to serve his own political interests rather than the interests of the American people.