Laurence Tribe is a constitutional law expert from Harvard. Having taught law at Harvard Law School for 50 years (!!!), he has argued 36 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Currently, he’s advising Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats on how to successfully impeach Pres. Donald Trump.
On Friday, Tribe was interviewed by MSNBC chief legal correspondent Ari Melber. Tribe explained that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) will essentially ruin Pres. Donald Trump by violating a legal principle that has existed for more than 1,000 years.
“What it looks like is that the majority leader is going to conduct this trial as though he’s a member of the defense team,” Tribe said. “You know, it’s an ancient principle, centuries-old — actually over a millennium old — that you can’t be a judge on your own case and effectively, to allow Donald Trump to call the shots, violates that principle.”
Tribe warns that McConnell’s approach may backfire.
“The reason it may backfire is that an exoneration — if that’s what emerges by a Senate that is essentially rigged and fixed so that it’s coordinated in this way with the defense really doesn’t clear the name of the accused so that the president will go down in history as having been essentially found guilty by the House in a proceeding where he had a chance to defend himself, but didn’t take advantage of it and then in a kind of rubber stamp sort of toss off, not really given a meaningful trial so that he will have been adjudicated fundamentally by the House of Representatives to have abused his office, abused his oath, and endangered the national security and then blockaded in the inquiry as though he were a dictator,” he charged.
What this means is that Trump can never be vindicated for his crimes. He’ll earn his place in the history book, the place where he belongs: the trash heap of American history. And that’s almost enough to give American some peace.
Featured image via video screengrab
