Laurence Tribe

The President is being sued for allegedly violating the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution because his hotels may accept payments from foreign governments. Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit, joins Lawrence.

The New York Times reported Sunday evening on the first of likely many lawsuits attacking President Trump’s apparent violation of the Emoluments Clause...The ACLU, which already filed a Freedom of Information Act request for any documents relating to Trump’s potential conflicts, reportedly is seeking entities more directly harmed (for example, a hotel competitor) for a separate suit...[Laurence] Tribe told Right Turn that if Hotel X in competition with Trump has to negotiate arm’s-length leases while Trump does not, then “there’s a good argument that both Hotel X and its employees are at a competitive disadvantage caused by Trump’s cozy violation of the terms forbidding leasing of that federal building to a federal official, which obviously includes POTUS Trump.”

A team of prominent constitutional scholars, Supreme Court litigators and former White House ethics lawyers intends to file a lawsuit Monday morning alleging that President Trump is violating the Constitution by allowing his hotels and other business operations to accept payments from foreign governments...The legal team filing the lawsuit includes Laurence H. Tribe, a Harvard constitutional scholar; Norman L. Eisen, an Obama administration ethics lawyer; and Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine. Among the others are Richard W. Painter, an ethics counsel in the administration of George W. Bush; Mr. Gupta, a Supreme Court litigator who has three cases pending before the court; and Zephyr Teachout, a Fordham University law professor and former congressional candidate who has been studying and writing about the Emoluments Clause for nearly a decade.

Rather than commit to investigating President-elect Donald Trump’s ongoing conflicts of interest and his refusal to comply with the letter of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) has decided to dragoon the head of the Office of Government Ethics, who spoke out about Trump’s ethical shortcomings, to a closed-door session....Laurence Tribe echoed that sentiment. “It’s crucial not only that the government’s chief ethics watchdog be permitted to do the vital job for which that independent officer was appointed but that the public be permitted to watch that job being done rather than having to sort, after the fact, through potentially misleading descriptions of who said what to whom at a closed meeting,” he told Right Turn.

...I contacted law professor Laurence Tribe, who has argued that under his current arrangement Trump will be in violation of the Emoluments Clause, and asked him what Democrats in Congress can do, if anything, to prod Republican leaders to exercise real oversight. Tribe emailed that their options are limited, but not nonexistent: "They can cajole and pressure and bargain and refuse to cooperate with Republicans on issues where the votes of the Democrats are needed. But there is no legal mechanism they can use to compel the congressional Republicans to perform their proper oversight role. Among the things Democrats can pressure Republicans to do, with uncertain success of course, is to share subpoena power with them on one or more joint investigative/oversight committees. They can certainly try to introduce impeachment resolutions despite their minority status in the House.

An op-ed by Richard W. Painter, Laurence H. Tribe, Norman L. Eisen, and Joshua Matz. Last week, President-elect Donald Trump’s lawyers issued a brief, largely unnoticed memo defending Trump’s plan to “separate” himself from his businesses. We believe that memo arbitrarily limits itself to a small portion of the conflicts it purports to address, and even there, presents claims that depart from precedent and common sense. Trump can convince a lot of people of a lot of things—but neither he nor his lawyers can explain away the ethics train wreck that will soon crash into the Oval Office.

As we reported, the director of the Office of Government Ethics, Walter Shaub, announced at a press conference on Wednesday that President-elect Donald Trump’s “fix” to his ethics and emoluments clause problems didn’t fix anything...Laurence Tribe also sees this as thinly veiled intimidation. “For a member of Congress to make veiled threats to the federal ethics chief for publicly criticizing the President-elect’s plan to comply with the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause and to avoid ethical conflicts – a plan that Director Shaub of the Office of Government Ethics rightly slammed as meaningless – is profoundly disturbing,” said the legal scholar and litigator. “Such threats can only chill fully protected speech and expression of opinion that is vital to our republic. Nothing about the job description of the Director imposes a gag or compels him to keep his concerns to himself or to limit those concerns to purely internal government memos. Chaffetz has truly gone off the reservation here.”

At long last, Donald Trump on Wednesday unveiled his plan to separate himself from his business interests while president, something he previously promised would be oh-so simple to do at the same time he was finding reasons to delay taking any clear action on the matter. Based on what Trump shared Wednesday, the plan wasn’t worth the wait...“His elaborate-looking scheme constitutes at best a Potemkin trust, to coin a semi-Russian phrase,” Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe told Slate.

Well-known legal scholar, recognized constitutional law expert and member of the faculty at Harvard Law School, Professor Laurence Tribe, went on a Twitter rampage for the ages on Wednesday. It was all in response to President-elect Donald Trump’s major press conference at which his lawyer, Sheri Dillon, was tasked with explaining the plan devised by Trump’s legal team for how his businesses will be run while he is serving as president. Tribe even went on to tell LawNewz.com that “the whole phony setup would make President Trump a living, walking, talking, tweeting violation of the Emoluments Clause each time banks or funds linked to foreign sovereigns are allowed to take steps that Trump will necessarily know are enriching the total value of his family’s mega-business.”

President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement Wednesday that he’ll transfer management of his business empire to his sons — but will not divest the assets — won’t ease concerns about his conflicts of interest, say legal specialists...“It does not solve any of the problems,’’ Harvard Law School professor Laurence H. Tribe said of the plan. “It’s a complete ruse.”...Harvard’s Tribe, a constitutional law professor, said Trump’s trust plan still allows foreign governments to curry favor with the president and enhance his wealth, in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause. This is a provision that bars presidents from receiving funds from foreign governments. “Everyone in the world knows when they play golf at one of his courses or pay a lot of money at one of his hotels, that they are benefiting him and benefiting his brand,’’ Tribe said.

The director of the US Office of Government Ethics has criticised Donald Trump's plan to hand control of his business empire to his sons before his inauguration on 20 January..."As I listened, my jaw dropped. Trump's workaround is a totally fraudulent runaround," tweeted Professor Laurence Tribe of Harvard University, one of the leading constitutional lawyers in the US. "Trump's announced structure is cleverly designed to dazzle and deceive, but it solves none of the serious ethical or legal issues. Trump's lawyer would flunk constitutional law at any halfway decent law school. At least if the lawyer wasn't just joking."

President-elect Donald Trump’s strategy on addressing his conflicts of interest seemed to be to throw out as many bells and whistles as possible, sprinkle some remarks from highly compensated lawyers and hope he could muscle his way through concerns that he is setting up a scheme that will invite corruption and run afoul of the Constitution...His lawyer also claimed that the emoluments clause does not cover arm’s-length transactions. This is blatantly false. In a detailed legal memo prepared by Laurence Tribe, Richard Painter and Norman Eisen, they found: To start, the text supports this conclusion; since emoluments are properly defined as including “profit” from any employment, as well as “salary,” it is clear that even remuneration fairly earned in commerce can qualify...Tribe separately commented to me, “The steps he is taking constitute at best a Potemkin trust, to coin a phrase. He remains a walking, tweeting violation of the Emoluments Clause from the moment he takes office.”

An essay by Norman Eisen, Richard W. Painter and Laurence H. Tribe. Never in American history has a president-elect posed more conflict-of-interest and foreign-entanglement questions than Donald J. Trump. Trump, the owner of a large real estate and licensing business with holdings around the world, has promised that on January 11, less than two weeks before he takes office, he will announce his plan to separate himself from his businesses. After repeatedly hesitating and delaying, will he finally do the right thing? Here are five key questions we must ask to evaluate whether the plan truly mitigates the risk of corruption and scandal.

A group of more than 1,100 law school professors from across the country is sending a letter to Congress on Tuesday urging the Senate to reject the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) for attorney general. The letter, signed by professors from 170 law schools in 48 states, is also scheduled to run as a full-page newspaper ad aimed at members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will be holding confirmation hearings for Sessions on Jan. 10-11...“We are convinced that Jeff Sessions will not fairly enforce our nation’s laws and promote justice and equality in the United States,” states the letter, signed by prominent legal scholars including Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard Law School, Geoffrey R. Stone of the University of Chicago Law School, Pamela S. Karlan of Stanford Law School and Erwin Chemerinsky of the University of California at Irvine School of Law.

Dean of Harvard Law School Martha L. Minow will step down at the end of the academic year to return to teaching full-time, ending an eight-year tenure as dean that spanned a global financial crisis, federal Title IX scrutiny, and widespread student protest...“Being a scholar and a teacher was my highest aspiration. I’ve loved it and I am eager to return to it,” Minow said in an interview...“I cannot imagine as good a dean for the Law School [as Minow],” Law School professor Laurence H. Tribe said. “I think that Drew Faust made a wise and brilliant selection in persuading Martha to become dean of the law school and I look forward to working with President Faust to finding a successor, but I think Martha’s shoes are impossible to fill.”...Nino Monea, the Law School’s student body president, said he enjoyed working with Minow, even as he challenged her and the administration to address student concerns...Law School professor Bruce H. Mann said he regarded Minow as someone who lives by her principles and has done a terrific job of leading the Law School.

A letter by Laurence Tribe and Mark Green...All the moves discussed by the Trumps to resolve their potential conflicts of interest add up to sacrificing pawns to protect the king(dom) — the Trump Organization. The Constitution’s Emoluments Clause is unambiguous. It forbids an American president from accepting anything of value from a foreign entity, without congressional consent, because that would open the door to bribery or extortion. The only way for President-elect Donald Trump to cure this problem would be an arms-length sale by a public trustee, not piecemeal judgments after Jan. 20 about the thousands of possible winks and nods between foreign leaders and the new administration.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. The story of the Supreme Court in 2016 can be summarized in a statistic: It’s been 311 days since Justice Antonin Scalia died on Feb. 13, and his seat remains unfilled. That’s not the longest Supreme Court vacancy in the modern era, but it’s about to enter second place -- and it will become the longest if Donald Trump’s nominee isn’t confirmed before the end of March. This striking fact will be front and center when the history of the court in 2016 is written. But what really matters isn’t the length of the vacancy. It’s the election in the middle of it. The Republican Senate changed the rules of confirmation drastically by refusing even to consider Judge Merrick Garland’s nomination. And against the odds, it paid off for them...More recently, the confirmation process for Robert Bork in 1987 had epochal consequences. For the first time, judicial philosophy was the focus. No one disputed Bork’s intelligence or qualifications. Instead liberals, including law professors like my colleague Laurence Tribe, criticized Bork’s conservatism as opposition to fundamental rights...As it turned out, that also meant that Tribe’s generational successor in that role, Cass Sunstein...also had little chance of being nominated, despite being much more centrist than Tribe and just as qualified in his own right. The rules of the game had changed.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe. When Donald Trump swears at the inauguration that he will “faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States”, he will be committing a violation of constitutional magnitude. The US constitution flatly prohibits any “Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States]” from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State”.

Up to five years of tax returns could be required to run for president in Massachusetts in 2020 if state Sen. Mike Barrett has anything to do with it...Larry Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard University, told The Minuteman Barrett's efforts are a step forward in financial and political transparency. "Senator Mike Barrett's tax-return-release bill is just the kind of effort through which the Commonwealth can set an example of good government for the rest of the nation to follow," Tribe said in an email. "I congratulate Mike on his creativity and on the care he's taking to meet all federal constitutional requirements."

...Harvard University constitutional law professor Lawrence Lessig earlier this week suggested as many as 20 Republican electors were considering changing their minds about Trump, though that report has not been confirmed...Many constitutional lawyers question whether those laws are constitutionally enforceable. However, the effort to allow the electors to vote their conscience was dealt a blow earlier this week when a Colorado judge ruled that electors in that state were not allowed to switch their votes. Given the hurdles, the anti-Trump revolt is unlikely to succeed, admits Larry Tribe, another professor at Harvard Law School. But Tribe insists that electors “have a responsibility to the country and the Constitution, in extreme enough situations.” “And I think this is a pretty extreme situation,” he said.

An op-ed by Laurence Tribe and Mark Green. For those worried about corruption and cronyism, Donald Trump’s coming for-profit presidency will hardly “drain the swamp.” Rather, it will create a new one, albeit with large, gold-plated all caps letters branding it a TRUMP property. His recent late-night misdirection by tweet on a busy news day, calling off a planned press conference on potential conflicts of interest, was clever but predictable — and predictably wrong. His effort to combine public service and self-enrichment would be blatantly unethical, unprecedented and unconstitutional.