Laurence Tribe

...“Trump’s betrayal of America in Helsinki adds quite a bit to the case for moving toward possible impeachment,” [Laurence] Tribe told the Washington Examiner. But it takes away none of the risks, which Tribe outlines in his new book with Joshua Matz on the subject, To End a Presidency. “Appointing a select bipartisan joint House-Senate committee with subpoena power entrusted to both the majority and the minority, charged to investigate what happened during the 2-hour closed meeting between Trump and Putin, and to explore all aspects of Trump’s peculiar stance toward the Russian Federation, would make sense as a minimum first step even before the midterms,” Tribe said in an email to the Washington Examiner.

...Laurence H. Tribe, Carl M. Loeb University Professor and a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School, told Newsweek: "If one defines 'war' to include cyberwar—e.g. by deliberately hacking into a nation’s computer-based election infrastructure—then what we witnessed in Helsinki was President Trump openly aiding and abetting the Russian military’s ongoing war against America rather than protecting against that Putin-led cyber-invasion. "That in turn could reasonably be defined as 'treason' within the meaning of 18 USC 2381 and Art. III of the US Constitution.

...President Trump is prepared to incarcerate entire families for indeterminate periods of time for what has been traditionally treated as a misdemeanor...This is a not-very-subtle form of extortion, constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe tells me. “These plans assume legal authority the administration does not have and put desperate parents to a ‘Sophie’s choice’ between submitting to extended imprisonment together with their children if they want to pursue their asylum claims — and abandoning their children along with their claims to asylum in order to limit how long their children must suffer imprisonment.”

By a 5-4 decision along the usual ideological lines, the Supreme Court upheld the third iteration of the Muslim travel ban. On one hand, the court directly rejected the administration’s claim was non-reviewable by the court. However, in an opinion by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the court accorded extreme deference to the president and held, despite replete evidence of religious animus, that the executive order should be upheld...The courts can do a great deal to restrain an out-of-control chief executive, but especially with a Supreme Court majority of passive conservative justices, they cannot do everything. Constitutional scholar Larry Tribe observed, “This was hardly the Supreme Court’s finest hour. Some major court rulings are predictable but disappointing. This is among those — and it’s destined for infamy if and when the court again assumes its essential function of constraining oppression, bigotry and blindness.”

Book recommendations from Laurence Tribe...Tyrant by Stephen Greenblatt: As an avid fan of Greenblatt's work, I read his new book the moment it became available. Following the lead of Shakespeare, who used history to shed light on his own time, Tyrant offers a brilliant meditation on the patterns of character and fate that drive tyrants to seek unbounded power and lead some societies to submit to their cruelties.

Don’t get me wrong — I’d give almost anything to have a boring president (of either party) who colors inside the constitutional lines. Given that we do not, however, we might think of the Trump presidency as a four-year course in constitutional and criminal law...First, when Trump says something such as I can pardon myself, or I haven’t decided if I will talk to the special counsel (ultimately a subpoena will settle the matter), do not consider it a pronouncement on the law or even a statement of intent. He says whatever he thinks in the moment serves his interests, shows he is top dog and/or pumps up his base. Rather than get irate, the rest of us have a job: show why his utterance is beyond the realm of reasonable argument. Take Trump’s self-pardon doctrine. Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe tells me a self-pardon is an “a constitutional impossibility.” Former chief White House ethics lawyer Norman Eisen advises that a self-pardon “is inimical to the constitution and rule of law. It would be invalid, and would be set aside by the courts should a prosecutor or another party with standing challenge it.”

President Trump unleashed an aggressive attack Sunday on unauthorized immigrants and the judicial system that handles them, saying that those who cross into the United States illegally should be sent back immediately without due process or an appearance before a judge. “We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country,” Mr. Trump tweeted while on the way to his golf course in Virginia. “When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came.”...Mr. Trump’s tweets on Sunday threw new legal questions into the puzzle. Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard, said in an email that the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that “the due process requirements of the Fifth and 14th Amendments apply to all persons, including those in the U.S. unlawfully.” “Trump is making the tyrannical claim that he has the right to serve as prosecutor, judge and jury with respect to all those who enter our country,” Mr. Tribe said. “That is a breathtaking assertion of unbounded power — power without any plausible limit.”

Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe wants to teach Americans a lesson about impeachment, warning that it is “too important and too vital a power to be bandied about as ordinary politics.” Trump’s most ardent critics have been calling for impeachment since the day he was inaugurated, and while Democratic Party leaders have said it’s premature to talk about impeachment, a few House Democrats have already advocated for it...Tribe’s new book To End a Presidency, written with attorney Joshua Matz, offers a guide to the process of impeachment — a power they argue “should be invoked only under dire circumstances” — and wrestles with the consequences of taking such an action. Tribe spoke to TIME about his book, Trump’s pardon power and the trouble with impeachment.

Harvard Law School professor Larry Tribe discusses his new book, “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment,” which explores when, if ever, U.S. Presidents should be impeached.

Crooked.com Editor in Chief Brian Beutler talks to Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe, co-author of To End a Presidency about constitutional law, the history of impeachment, and whether Republicans have made themselves immune from it.

With the president and his lawyers claiming he is shielded from prosecution and simultaneously able to pardon himself for any federal crime, are there any checks on Donald Trump’s actions at all from the courts? And what happens if the courts rule against him on a matter he believes could threaten his presidency or even his liberty? As Trump’s claims of overarching, even regal powers have grown more fervid in recent weeks, those questions have become increasingly worrisome to constitutional experts...“There certainly is such a worry,” said Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School.

In a January letter to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, two of President Trump’s lawyers asserted that the president dictated a statement concerning the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer, just as The Post reported last year. One of those Trump lawyers, Jay Sekulow, had gone on national television not once, but multiple times, in 2017 to claim his client had nothing to do with the statement. (The statement Trump dictated falsely claimed that the meeting was just about adoptions from Russia.) So why is this a big deal? Constitutional lawyer Laurence Tribe tells me that the lawyers’ letter amounts to “a confession of conspiring to facilitate obstruction by Donald [Trump] Jr.” Moreover, Tribe says the false statement now known to be Trump’s handiwork reveals “some motives in taking steps like firing [James] Comey and pressuring [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions to un-recuse.”

Laurence Tribe, Harvard Law professor and co-author of “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment,” thinks the White House’s legal strategy in the Russia Investigation is thin and unlikely to work. Lawyers for President Trump laid out their plan in multiple confidential documents obtained by the New York Times. Tribe says there is plenty of legal precedent to support Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s quest to subpoena President Trump.

Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe joins Katy Tur to talk through the similarities between the ways these two Presidents framed the investigations during their presidencies.

Lawrence talks with Laurence Tribe about Tribe’s view that Trump’s promised pardon to a right-wing commentator who pleaded guilty to illegal campaign contributions is "an elephant-whistle to Michael Cohen and all who know damning things about Trump” to protect the President- or else.

On the May 26 episode of Slate’s Supreme Court podcast Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick spoke with Laurence Tribe about the philosophical, practical, and tactical considerations surrounding Donald Trump’s possible impeachment. Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and professor of constitutional law at Harvard, is the co-author of To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment.

If Donald Trump prevails in his clash with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, one of his legacies may be to redefine the limits of presidential power -- a constitutional concept so amorphous that even his own lawyers’ views on the matter appear to evolve. A private letter from Trump’s legal team to Mueller, written in January, asserted what amounts to an unlimited right to halt federal investigations and issue pardons, concluding that a president cannot obstruct justice...In an email, Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe, a frequent critic of Trump, called the letter "flatly wrong legally and indefensible constitutionally." "Trump’s lawyers’ sweepingly Nixonian claim of unbounded presidential power is inconsistent with the core American principle that no-one is above the law," Tribe wrote on Twitter. "It would mean that even pardoning someone in return for a bribe is just fine. That’s simply wrong."

The New York Times reports on an encounter between President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in March 2017...If the report is accurate, Mueller is looking at a possible obstruction of justice claim based on conduct over a substantial period of time — from Trump’s failed effort to extract a pledge of loyalty from former FBI director James B. Comey, to asking Comey to lay off fired national security adviser Michael Flynn, to Comey’s firing, to Trump holding a threat of imaginary “tapes” over Comey’s head, to drafting on Air Force One a phony explanation of the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting. Pushing for Sessions to reverse his recusal, like any other single action, is unlikely to support an obstruction charge...The fight over Sessions’s recusal marks another instance in which the White House has reached down into the Justice Department in ways no other administration has done. “Asking Sessions to ‘unrecuse’ himself despite his conflict of interest, in palpable violation of the Department of Justice recusal rules, can only have one purpose: the corrupt obstruction of justice,” says constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe.

While President Trump demands an investigation into the investigators investigating the investigation, the clamor to impeach grows evermore fervent in some quarters. Dahlia Lithwick explores the legal and constitutional questions surrounding impeachment with constitutional scholar and Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, co-author of To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment.

The Justice Department held two unprecedented, highly controversial briefings for two groups of lawmakers concerning an ongoing criminal and counter-intelligence investigation....According to constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, the sessions “exemplify the slow but steady collapse of the most basic norms of investigatory, prosecutorial and judicial independence and display Trump doing in plain sight what Richard Nixon worked so hard to hide from public view.” He explained, “What disturbs me most is that not even sacrificing our counterintelligence shield against foreign adversaries with no factual basis is beyond this president — and that not even such transparent treachery is likely to be recognized by the public for the betrayal it clearly is once Trump enlists his Fox allies to label responsible investigation as ‘Spygate.’ ”