After The Common Good hosted a successful evening of rousing discussion between expert Harvard legal scholar Dr. Laurence Tribe and host of The Circus John Heilemann, the press was quick to take note of Dr. Tribe’s insightful takes on a potential constitutional crisis at bay. RealClearPolitics reported on the preliminary discussion that Dr. Tribe and Heilemann had, and what Dr. Tribe had to say about the necessity, or lack thereof, of impeachment.
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Showtime's "The Circus" host John Heilemann sits with Harvard Law Professor and author, Laurence Tribe, to discuss his views on impeachment, the Justice Department, and whether or not a sitting president can be indicted.
"Imagine, for example, a president who bribed enough members of the House not to be impeached, or enough members of the Senate to ensure he wouldn't be convicted. In that scenario, saying, oh well, the remedy for an out of control president is impeachment and removal and that is all, effectively gives him a blank check to become an autocrat. So there is effectively no good case for saying that president can't possibly be indicted," Tribe explained.
"The reason is that impeachment is not a magic wand, you don't just wave it and then voila, he's not there. You have to worry about the Senate will do, you have to worry about how the nation will react... You can't remove a president when only 40% of the people believe he should be removed. Therefore you have to ask, what do we do in that circumstance? Maybe we take advantage of the uprising of political energy and hope for a result in 2020 that overwhelmingly repudiates him. Impeachment isn't the only way to be rid of a terrible president."
- RealClearPolitics reporter Tim Hanes, READ MORE
