Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Every
Speaker 1: day we bring you insight and analysis into the most
Speaker 1: important legal news of the day. You can find more
Speaker 1: episodes of the Bloomberg Law Podcast on Apple podcast, SoundCloud
Speaker 1: and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. As the impeachment
Speaker 1: inquiry moves forward, this morning on Twitter, President Trump dared
Speaker 1: House Democrats to quote try to impeach this over a
Speaker 1: largely read election map. My guest is renowned constitutional scholar
Speaker 1: Lawrence tribe Of, professor at Harvard Law School. His latest
Speaker 1: book is To End a Presidency about the power of impeachment.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for joining us again, Larry, My pleasure.
Speaker 1: So when we spoke last year about impeachment, you advised
Speaker 1: proceeding with caution seeing how the president reacts to an
Speaker 1: investigation by Democrats. Have we reached the point where you
Speaker 1: think impeachment is warranted? I think it's warranted, and I
Speaker 1: think it's in this inscible, the country has clearly crossed
Speaker 1: the rubicon. I was cautious, but not cowardly, and it
Speaker 1: seems to me that just as Nancy Pelosi was insistent
Speaker 1: on proceeding in a methodical manner. Having done that, we
Speaker 1: are now at a place where the President has shown
Speaker 1: himself to be an active danger, clear and present danger
Speaker 1: to the Republic. He's willing to get foreign adversaries to
Speaker 1: do his bidding. He's willing to pressure for an allies
Speaker 1: like Ukraine in order to benefit for an adversaries and
Speaker 1: dig up dirt on his own political opponents. He's clearly
Speaker 1: shown that he doesn't understand or believe in the American
Speaker 1: Constitution or the rule of law. He is now a
Speaker 1: danger to national security because he's trying to out the
Speaker 1: identity of a whistleblower who's protected precisely so that our
Speaker 1: system of intelligence gathering can work effectively. We've now learn
Speaker 1: earned that he gave up critical national secrets about the
Speaker 1: identity of someone who was undercover for the government of
Speaker 1: Israel in getting information about Isis. He's endangering the country
Speaker 1: and he's doing it by abusing his powers as president.
Speaker 1: This is no longer cover up hush money for a
Speaker 1: sex scandal in the lead up to the election. This
Speaker 1: is now the president using his powers as president to
Speaker 1: undermine the Republic to benefit himself. It's exactly what the
Speaker 1: framers of the Constitution James Madison and others said we
Speaker 1: would need someday to remove the president over and that
Speaker 1: day has now come. In your up ed in the
Speaker 1: Guardian this week, you're right that if the House is
Speaker 1: going to impeach the president, it better have a plan.
Speaker 1: How should the House proceed in light of the president
Speaker 1: and his administration, including today the Secretary of State continuing
Speaker 1: to stone Wall. I think it's queer, and I think
Speaker 1: that Speaker Pelosi is on board with this. I think
Speaker 1: it's clear that stonewalling will no longer do. We're not
Speaker 1: going to play their game and just take them to
Speaker 1: court and wait while courts take this week time over things.
Speaker 1: We're going to say stonewalling equals guilt equals impeach ability.
Speaker 1: So that when Pompeio says, how dare you ask my
Speaker 1: state department officials to testify or turn over documents? How
Speaker 1: dare you question me even though I hid the fact
Speaker 1: that I was on that extortion at call between the
Speaker 1: President and the leader of Ukraine Zelinsky, We're going to answer.
Speaker 1: Just watch us. We're going to not wait. We're going
Speaker 1: to say that these acts of resisting legitimate congressional inquiry
Speaker 1: are themselves impeachable. That was, after all, article free of
Speaker 1: the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon. And Richard Nixon,
Speaker 1: if fuel pardon the expression, was just a piker compared
Speaker 1: to this. You know, he had his own little plumbers unit,
Speaker 1: but he didn't outsource his attempt to squash his enemies
Speaker 1: to foreign governments. This is unbelievably close to what George
Speaker 1: Washington warned us about at the very beginning of the Republic,
Speaker 1: that in a world of serpents, we might end up
Speaker 1: being stung and lethally. So if we link our fate
Speaker 1: to foreign powers, we need to preserve our sovereignty from
Speaker 1: the kinds of foreign entanglements that this president is engaging in.
Speaker 1: And the irony is he says that a ragtag group
Speaker 1: of refugees coming in from the southern border threatened our sovereignty,
Speaker 1: when the real threat to our sovereignty is named Donald J. Trump.
Speaker 1: I want to get into some specifics about the articles
Speaker 1: of impeachment themselves. Speaker Nancy Pelosi seems to be indicating
Speaker 1: a narrow focus on the Ukraine events as opposed to
Speaker 1: a broader focus on Trump's presidency, which is the best course.
Speaker 1: I think the Speaker has it exactly right. People are
Speaker 1: not interested in playing the game of spinning out all
Speaker 1: of the terrible things this president has done that could
Speaker 1: take us forever. You know, by the time we were done,
Speaker 1: he would be into the fourth term of the presidency
Speaker 1: that he believes never needs to end. We need to
Speaker 1: focus on the fact that he has betrayed the country.
Speaker 1: He's endangered our national security, he's extorted an ally, he's
Speaker 1: played ball with an enemy. It's not technically treason. He
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to know that the definition of treason doesn't
Speaker 1: apply to anything that's going on now. But it's awfully treacherous,
Speaker 1: and I think Nancy Pelosi is right in zeroing in
Speaker 1: on it, which is why she is right to give
Speaker 1: the primary responsibility for the hearings about impeachment to the
Speaker 1: Intelligence Committee under Adam Schiff. I think that although I
Speaker 1: suggested in one of the op eds I wrote in
Speaker 1: the last couple of days that the Judiciary Committee might
Speaker 1: also hold hearings, I've had second thoughts about whether that
Speaker 1: is even necessary. It's aims to me that it would
Speaker 1: be redundant, that it would be time wasting. We need
Speaker 1: now not to abuse the public's patients. People are concerned
Speaker 1: about bread and butter issues. They don't want the impeachment
Speaker 1: and removal of this president to take an indefinite amount
Speaker 1: of time. We need to bring it to a close
Speaker 1: this year. In the case of President Nixon and also
Speaker 1: in the case of President Clinton, the Judiciary Committee work
Speaker 1: for months on drafting the articles of impeachment. Democratic lawmakers
Speaker 1: are talking about drafting one or more articles in a
Speaker 1: matter of weeks. I can help them do it in
Speaker 1: a matter of days. People like me, who have written
Speaker 1: books about this, have studied it for decades, don't really
Speaker 1: need weeks or months to draft articles of impeachment. This
Speaker 1: guy has virtually drafted his own articles of impeachment, and
Speaker 1: I'm eager to get started helping Congress do it. Finally,
Speaker 1: we just have about a minute here. You also say
Speaker 1: the House might just reach a verdict on its own
Speaker 1: and not refer the matter to the Senate. How would
Speaker 1: that war, Well, it was an off ramp that I
Speaker 1: was considering, and I don't think it should be ruled out.
Speaker 1: If it had turned out, for example, that Mitch McConnell
Speaker 1: would deep six the articles of impeachment and not really
Speaker 1: give them a fair hearing, the House could simply pay
Speaker 1: attention to the president's defense and reach its own conclusions
Speaker 1: about his high crimes and misdemeanors. That remains a possibility,
Speaker 1: but as of yesterday, the Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell has
Speaker 1: said that under the rules of the Senate that he
Speaker 1: says are binding, he needs to have a vote and
Speaker 1: a real trial. Now, he did say that the trial
Speaker 1: could be a quickie proceeding, and that worries me a little.
Speaker 1: If it looks like it's going to be a fixed
Speaker 1: verdict and a done deal, then maybe the House should
Speaker 1: reconsider exactly what it does. But once the House concludes
Speaker 1: that the president has committed high crimes and misdemeanors, it
Speaker 1: would be hard pressed the way matters have now evolved,
Speaker 1: for it to prevent the Senate from conducting the trial
Speaker 1: that the Constitution contemplates. And thank you so much, we'll
Speaker 1: have to leave it there. That's Lawrence Tribe, professor at
Speaker 1: Harvard Law School, is book to End to Presidency. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe
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Speaker 1: on Bloomberg dot com. Slash podcast I'm June Brosso. This
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