Harvard’s Tribe on Why Impeachment Is Necessary

Lawrence tribe Of, professor at Harvard Law School. His latest book is To End a Presidency about the power of impeachment. Thanks so much for joining us again, Larry, My pleasure. So when we spoke last year about impeachment, you advised proceeding with caution seeing how the president reacts to an investigation by Democrats. Have we reached the point where you think impeachment is warranted? I think it's warranted, and I think it's in this inscible, the country has clearly crossed

the rubicon. I was cautious, but not cowardly, and it seems to me that just as Nancy Pelosi was insistent on proceeding in a methodical manner. Having done that, we are now at a place where the President has shown himself to be an active danger, clear and present danger to the Republic. He's willing to get foreign adversaries to do his bidding. He's willing to pressure for an allies like Ukraine in order to benefit for an adversaries and

dig up dirt on his own political opponents. He's clearly shown that he doesn't understand or believe in the American Constitution or the rule of law. He is now a danger to national security because he's trying to out the identity of a whistleblower who's protected precisely so that our system of intelligence gathering can work effectively. We've now learn earned that he gave up critical national secrets about the identity of someone who was undercover for the government of

Israel in getting information about Isis. He's endangering the country and he's doing it by abusing his powers as president. This is no longer cover up hush money for a sex scandal in the lead up to the election. This is now the president using his powers as president to undermine the Republic to benefit himself. It's exactly what the framers of the Constitution James Madison and others said we would need someday to remove the president over and that

day has now come. In your up ed in the Guardian this week, you're right that if the House is going to impeach the president, it better have a plan. How should the House proceed in light of the president and his administration, including today the Secretary of State continuing to stone Wall. I think it's queer, and I think that Speaker Pelosi is on board with this. I think

it's clear that stonewalling will no longer do. We're not going to play their game and just take them to court and wait while courts take this week time over things. We're going to say stonewalling equals guilt equals impeach ability. So that when Pompeio says, how dare you ask my

state department officials to testify or turn over documents? How dare you question me even though I hid the fact that I was on that extortion at call between the President and the leader of Ukraine Zelinsky, We're going to answer. Just watch us. We're going to not wait. We're going to say that these acts of resisting legitimate congressional inquiry are themselves impeachable. That was, after all, article free of

the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon. And Richard Nixon, if fuel pardon the expression, was just a piker compared to this. You know, he had his own little plumbers unit, but he didn't outsource his attempt to squash his enemies to foreign governments. This is unbelievably close to what George Washington warned us about at the very beginning of the Republic, that in a world of serpents, we might end up

being stung and lethally. So if we link our fate to foreign powers, we need to preserve our sovereignty from the kinds of foreign entanglements that this president is engaging in. And the irony is he says that a ragtag group of refugees coming in from the southern border threatened our sovereignty, when the real threat to our sovereignty is named Donald J. Trump. I want to get into some specifics about the articles

of impeachment themselves. Speaker Nancy Pelosi seems to be indicating a narrow focus on the Ukraine events as opposed to a broader focus on Trump's presidency, which is the best course. I think the Speaker has it exactly right. People are not interested in playing the game of spinning out all of the terrible things this president has done that could take us forever. You know, by the time we were done, he would be into the fourth term of the presidency

that he believes never needs to end. We need to focus on the fact that he has betrayed the country. He's endangered our national security, he's extorted an ally, he's played ball with an enemy. It's not technically treason. He doesn't seem to know that the definition of treason doesn't

apply to anything that's going on now. But it's awfully treacherous, and I think Nancy Pelosi is right in zeroing in on it, which is why she is right to give the primary responsibility for the hearings about impeachment to the Intelligence Committee under Adam Schiff. I think that although I suggested in one of the op eds I wrote in the last couple of days that the Judiciary Committee might also hold hearings, I've had second thoughts about whether that

is even necessary. It's aims to me that it would be redundant, that it would be time wasting. We need now not to abuse the public's patients. People are concerned about bread and butter issues. They don't want the impeachment and removal of this president to take an indefinite amount of time. We need to bring it to a close this year. In the case of President Nixon and also in the case of President Clinton, the Judiciary Committee work

for months on drafting the articles of impeachment. Democratic lawmakers are talking about drafting one or more articles in a matter of weeks. I can help them do it in a matter of days. People like me, who have written books about this, have studied it for decades, don't really need weeks or months to draft articles of impeachment. This guy has virtually drafted his own articles of impeachment, and I'm eager to get started helping Congress do it. Finally,

we just have about a minute here. You also say the House might just reach a verdict on its own and not refer the matter to the Senate. How would that war, Well, it was an off ramp that I was considering, and I don't think it should be ruled out. If it had turned out, for example, that Mitch McConnell would deep six the articles of impeachment and not really give them a fair hearing, the House could simply pay attention to the president's defense and reach its own conclusions

about his high crimes and misdemeanors. That remains a possibility, but as of yesterday, the Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell has said that under the rules of the Senate that he says are binding, he needs to have a vote and a real trial. Now, he did say that the trial could be a quickie proceeding, and that worries me a little. If it looks like it's going to be a fixed verdict and a done deal, then maybe the House should

reconsider exactly what it does. But once the House concludes that the president has committed high crimes and misdemeanors, it would be hard pressed the way matters have now evolved, for it to prevent the Senate from conducting the trial that the Constitution contemplates. And thank you so much, we'll have to leave it there. That's Lawrence Tribe, professor at Harvard Law School, is book to End to Presidency. Thanks

for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple podcast, SoundCloud, and on Bloomberg dot com. Slash podcast I'm June Brosso. This is Bloomberg,