Laurence Tribe

When Harvard Law School Constitutional Law Professor Laurence H. Tribe ’62 learned that Barack Obama—one of his “best students”—had been elected president of the United States, he reached out immediately to the President-elect to discuss how he might be of service. “The decision that we made together, with [former U.S. Attorney General] Eric Holder, was that I would leave Harvard for a little while and start up a new office in the Department of Justice on an understudied and underfunded but really pervasive problem—access to justice,” Tribe said...Tribe was not alone in his decision to head to Washington. Several members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, as well as professors from the Law School and the Kennedy School, also left Harvard to take on administrative positions following Obama’s election. In stark contrast, very few Harvard faculty have joined the administration of President Donald Trump.

Former acting attorney general Sally Yates hit the nail on the head on Monday on “Morning Joe.” She explained, “I think what we’re seeing here is the president has taken his all-out assault of the rule of law to a new level and this time he is ordering up an investigation of the investigators who are examining his own campaign. You know, that’s really shocking.”...Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe tells me: “The Court’s basic approach to this whole subject turns on the idea that intrinsically legislative activities — including all actions that form an ‘integral part of the deliberative and communicative processes by which members’ take part in committee or floor activities with respect to lawmaking or investigative functions entrusted by the Constitution to Congress — are absolutely protected from civil or criminal inquiry external to Congress. That includes voting, preparing committee reports, and conducting committee hearings.

...Just as Trump did with the entirely bogus “wiretapping” accusation against President Barack Obama, Trump called for the Justice Department to investigate. Here is yet another instance in which, with no factual basis, he has attempted to have investigators, whom he perceives as political enemies, investigated. (Laurence Tribe, the constitutional scholar and co-author of “To End A Presidency: The Power of Impeachment,” tweeted: “Telling DOJ what to investigate as though it was [White House] staff — especially when the directive is clearly aimed at outing a top secret national security asset to conceal evidence of presidential wrongdoing — may well be part of an impeachable pattern.”)

Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe warned against impeaching President Trump on Sunday, implying the process could worsen political dysfunction and polarization. "It's important that we not exacerbate the dysfunction and the polarization in the society that helped Donald Trump rise to power in the first place," Tribe told CNN's Fareed Zakaria. "If we were to use the impeachment power simply as a substitute for buyer's remorse, saying 'We thought this guy was terrible, but he's even worse,' if we were going to use it against ambient badness, rather than clear abuse of power — we would really use the impeachment power to undermine, rather than save, our democracy," he continued.

...Today, the impeachment of Donald Trump exists on the brink of plausibility. The sine qua non of an impeachment investigation, to say nothing of actual votes to charge and remove the President, is a Democratic takeover of the House in the November elections. Such a change now looks better than possible, maybe even probable...Ultimately, every consideration of impeachment returns to the standard established in the Constitution...As in the nineteen-seventies and the nineteen-nineties, the prospect of a Presidential impeachment has spurred renewed academic interest in the subject, resulting in two recent volumes by well-known Harvard law professors. Last year, Cass Sunstein, who served in the Obama Administration, released “Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide,” and Laurence Tribe, the noted liberal academic and litigator, has just published “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment,” written with Joshua Matz...Laurence Tribe told me that he would regard some forms of misbehavior as impeachable, such as “a pattern of abusing the bully pulpit of the Presidency, one of its most potent if informal powers—especially when amplified by social media—to stir division within the electorate to the point of violence, to give permission to white supremacists to weaponize their hatred, and otherwise to undermine the foundations of our republic.”

Laurence Tribe and Fox News fact-check the recent Rudy Giuliani headlines that Mueller told the Trump team he can’t indict a sitting president—and discuss how “to end a presidency” with Lawrence O’Donnell.

The framers of the Constitution debated myriad difficult topics in creating our system of government. Among the most contentious focused on how to remove leaders guilty of serious abuses of their offices. “Benjamin Franklin was pretty clear that without impeachment, the only way of getting rid of a tyrannical ruler would be assassination,” said Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, whose latest book, co-authored with Joshua Matz, is titled “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment.”

Harvard Law professor and “To End a Presidency” author Laurence Tribe on the possibility of an impeachment trial for President Trump.

...Even though the actions occurred before the election, Trump may find himself in a legal fix. Constitutional scholar and co-author of a new book “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment” Laurence Tribe says, “Under the U.S. criminal code, soliciting a bribe is an independent offense even if the bribe doesn’t come through. And under the federal election code, soliciting prohibited foreign assistance in a U.S. election is an offense even if the assistance isn’t provided. The Trump family’s problems don’t end there, since ‘acts of solicitation’ can become overt acts that form part of a conspiracy to commit another crime.”

A Chinese government-owned company has signed on to build a theme park in a vast development in Indonesia that also features a Trump hotel and condos, a deal that stands to benefit President Donald Trump's company just as top Chinese envoys head to Washington for trade talks..."This clearly benefits the Trump Organization, and therefore its owner Donald Trump," said Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, who is advising on several lawsuits against the president. He added that it is irrelevant if the benefit came "indirectly" from China through the Indonesian company.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz. Many Americans now believe that President Trump should be removed from office. Increasingly, calls for impeachment have merged with allegations that Trump is a criminal. Only a thorough investigation can reveal whether Trump has actually broken the law. But regardless, it is wrong and dangerous to suggest that proof of criminal offenses is essential when deciding whether to impeach. It’s easy to understand the recent focus on criminality. It would be a very big deal if the president committed a crime. Further, the Constitution is frustratingly vague in defining grounds for removal: “Treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Given that ambiguity, tying impeachment to the criminal code feels comfortingly objective. It also neatly distinguishes impeachability from cruelty, incompetence and stupidity — none of which justifies removing a president.

Part two of an interview with Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz. Is there a danger in normalizing impeachment talk? This is a major theme of our book. The normalization of impeachment talk has created a massive boy-who-cries-wolf dilemma, diluting impeachment’s potency as a weapon of last resort in cases of genuine national peril. To many Americans, impeachment threats are little more than a standard rhetorical weapon in our partisan civil war. Recognizing this development, presidents and political entrepreneurs have aimed to benefit from impeachment talk by using it to rally their base, raise money, distract attention, and condemn opponents.

An interview with Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz. Why did you think a book on impeachment of this type was necessary now? Everyone with a pulse and an Internet connection knows that impeachment haunts Trumpland. Starting a year before the election and continuing through the present, discussion of [President] Trump’s disgraced ouster has been unavoidable. Amid all this impeachment talk, we found it distressing that many voters deeply misunderstand what’s involved in ending a presidency. Lots of people, for example, believe impeachment is justified based only on dislike of a president’s policies or personality.

A book review of "To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment" by Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz...In “To End a Presidency,” Mr Tribe and Mr Matz have written a powerful, clear and even-handed guide to the legal and political aspects of impeachment, which, as they point out, is “neither a magic wand nor a doomsday device”. Previous commentators have focused on the definition of an impeachable act, then assumed that justified suspicion of such conduct means a trial in the Senate. Mr Tribe and Mr Matz explain that the definition is but the “tip of the iceberg”. Other steps towards impeachment include public hearings on alleged misconduct; investigations; establishing a committee to consider a president’s removal; debates and votes by the committee and then the House; setting the rules for the Senate trial and conducting it; and voting by the senators on each charge.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz. The 2016 presidential election was the first campaign in American history marked by credible threats of impeachment against whoever won. This was partly because both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton had long been shadowed by charges of corruption, criminality and conspiracy. But it also reflected a more unnerving development: the emergence of a permanent presidential impeachment campaign. Since the failed effort to oust President Bill Clinton two decades ago, calls to remove the president have become standard fare in American politics. In a stark break from the past, a whole generation has come to view impeachment talk as an ordinary feature of our partisan civil war, in which nothing is sacred and the Constitution has been weaponized. This degradation of presidential impeachment is dangerous.

...In many ways, the Trump International D.C. is a proxy for the president himself. And every once in a while, as was becoming apparent tonight, it’s his stage as well...So far, four groups have filed lawsuits against Trump regarding the hotel, asking the courts to shutter the property, compel Trump to sell it, or require Trump to resign the presidency...No president has been formally accused of breaching the Constitution’s Emoluments Clauses before, which means there’s little case law on the subject. Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, who advised President Barack Obama and serves as an attorney for CREW in its lawsuit against Trump, explained to me in an email how he believes the Trump Hotel D.C. violates these clauses: “When the Trump Hotel receives payments from foreign governments, their agents, or entities controlled by them—to pay for things like national day events at the hotel or for diplomats to stay there, for instance—President Trump is enriched by receiving an ‘Emolument’ from a ‘King, Prince, or foreign State,’ in violation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause of Article I, Sec. 9."

If every FBI subject were as loose-lipped and oblivious as President Trump, they’d need to build more federal prisons. His latest outburst came on “Fox & Friends” Thursday morning: “And our Justice Department — which I try and stay away from, but at some point I won’t — our Justice Department should be looking at that kind of stuff, not the nonsense of collusion with Russia!” Several aspects of this require scrutiny...Second, Trump’s language betrays his motive to interfere with, to obstruct, the Russia investigation. Ironically, “corrupt intent,” usually difficult to prove, is now being demonstrated to millions of viewers. “Trump’s ominous statement that ‘at some point [he] won’t’ stay ‘away from our Justice Department’ can help weaponize public and hopefully congressional support for measures to protect Mueller and Rosenstein and, in that sense, the remark is helpful to Mueller,” says constitutional scholar Laurence H. Tribe.

Narcissism was in the air in Washington. On a February night a few hundred yards from the White House, Tom Steyer, the hedge fund billionaire and political activist, had taken over three rooms at the National Press Club for a panel called Presidential Mental Health & Nuclear Weapons...But Steyer, stepping to the lectern by their side, was unmistakably the star of the show. Applause broke out. He smiled and locked eyes with people around the room. Fans following the Facebook livestream sent thumbs-ups by the thousands as he and the five speakers set about explaining why Trump’s sadism, paranoia, unpredictability, and self-obsession make him ill-suited to nuclear weaponry...Still, Steyer has fans inside the impeachment cottage industry who are grateful for an ally rich enough to turn their ideas into zeitgeist. Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor who teaches a class on Trump and has a book about impeachment coming out in May, credits Steyer with pushing the topic into late-night talk shows and dinner-table conversations. “He’s encouraging people to take seriously something that might have been too much in the background,” Tribe said.

...Even the Democratic National Committee’s lawsuit against Russia’s intelligence outfit (GRU), WikiLeaks, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., Roger Stone, the Trump campaign and others for conspiracy can force Trump and members of his inner circle to turn over documents and sit for depositions where they will have to testify under oath. “This lawsuit is well-grounded jurisdictionally and legally, dodges the difficulties that might’ve been triggered by naming Trump personally, and puts a high-powered piece on the 4-dimensional chessboard that can cause Trump’s circle endless trouble (through discovery and otherwise) after criminal proceedings have been completed and regardless of what happens on the impeachment front,” says constitutional scholar and Supreme Court advocate Laurence H. Tribe (a real lawyer). It can also “provide a potent platform for educating the public about the ugly details of how this presidency arose from a swamp far dirtier than the one Trump promised to drain.”