Law school and constitutional lawyer. In their new book, they address one of todays most important questions when and how to remove a president from office. Although the constitution gives congress the power to impeach, the matter is not as simple as a vote on if the president is a national menace. Ultimately, impeachment is a long, trying process that calls for political judgment of the highest order. If you think impeachment is necessary or a partisan conspiracy, to end a presidency is essential for anyone who wishes to understand how this immense power should be xplored. An author writes impeachment is a fearsome power. This jshes account explains why no u. S. President has ever been removed from office by impeachment and what it might mean if one were. Please join me in welcoming lawrence tribe and joshua matz. [applause] thanks very much. Can you hear me . Thank you all for being ere. Im grateful to joshua for helping me work through these problems. Hes probably my favorite student since barack obama and hat is saying a lot. We work well together. We have different perspectives. I want to talk a little bit autobiographical he how i came to the subject of impeachment. It will give you kind of a gloss on the book and where it comes from inside of me. I was never taught anything about impeachment in constitutional law. Was not part of the curriculum. We were studying mostly the dormant Commerce Clause and occasionally some First Amendment law, but since i was about joshuas age that is, since 1974 during the watergate scandal that brought down richard nixon, i obviously started thinking very seriously about impeachment and what it was all about. To a newly tenured law professor at harvard, impeachment looked at the time like a rather practical way to preserve the nation, by pulling down a crooked president , preventing him from wrecking our constitution by ignoring the rule of law, using executive agencies like the fbi and cia and some private thugs to boot in order to hurt his political opponents. That seemed like an astonishing threat to the rule of law and to our system of government. Little did any of us imagine that we would see much the same thing but with a hostile foreign power as the colluding entity in achieving president ial authority. I spent the four or five years after the watergate scandal studying, really, the whole constitution and sort of writing about it as a whole. Looking at things that seemed rather marginal at the time except maybe for the impeachment clause, which had had its day in the nixon era, the emoluments clause was one of the things i studied. I thought it would be an interesting thing to look at. Never thought it would come in handy. You never know what will be relevant in the constitution, and indeed, my whole approach to the constitution and the approach, really, of this book is to see the constitution as a whole as an integrated structure, not simply as a series of discrete points and powers and rights and responsibilities. Thats why as we wrote about impeachment and studied it, we thought about how it would fit into the system of government, what might happen to make the presidency twoweek too weak. For example, we followed the path some countries have followed of making anything that might be as vague as maladministration or misbehavior or misconduct the basis of removing a president actually, that was done by some american states as a way of removing their highest executive authority massachusetts, new jersey, pennsylvania and a smattering of countries abroad. We would have had a very different kind of system. It would have been almost like a vote of noconfidence. If on the other hand we approached rings the way argentina or germany or india or south africa or poland did, we would have been a very different kind of country as well. They basically say that anything that is a crime or that is unconstitutional violates the basic contract that keeps the chief executive in power. If we had that, how often would a court dare to hold a particular president ial act like the travel ban or Something Else unconstitutional if they knew it would immediately bring down the president . There are a lot of things a president can do that are obviously inconsistent with our system of government. Directing that anyone who beats up a black person or a muslim would automatically be pardoned and not subject to prosecution. We had to formulate and we took our guidance from what the framers themselves thought and did in developing this living constitution, we had to formulate an approach to what is or is not impeachable. Its pretty clear that not every instance of perjury should be impeachable. I concluded that when clintons lying under oath about sex with an intern was treated as a way of ringing him down. That charge on which he was impeached was one that got only 55 votes in the senate to convict. 45 voted to acquit. 55 was not enough. You need 67. The other charge against clinton obstruction of justice which was a repackaged version of the perjury charge came out 5050. Clinton emerged triumphant. His popularity soared. That gave us a clue to what some of the dangers of impeaching prematurely or too soon our. That is, somebody can be the most terrible demagogic liar, can melt the fabric of our society, but if it does not look like attacking his position through a bill of impeachment will result in anything more than a claim that he has been vindicated you see, i told you, no obstruction, no collusion vindicated and empowered to do even more horrible things, we may have to think twice about if impeachment makes sense. Joshua will talk about some of the other factors that make even a successful impeachment if by that we mean an impeachment that results in forced resignation as with nixon or an actual conviction, which we have never done, some of the factors that make even a fully successful impeachment extremely convulsive for the country, that is the factors that allowed someone like trump to be elected president in the first place, the things will not go away. Impeachment is not a magic wand. We have been amazed by how many eople send us emails or tweets saying, cannot wait for your book because it will remove gorsuch from the Supreme Court. The president is illegitimate and everything he has done will be unwound. That is kind of magic wand hinking. Hat kind of magical thinking about the power of impeachment really does not do much good, ut at the other extreme, the sort of apocalyptic thinking that said that if we succeed in removing a president , if the offenses and abuses of power that people discover in the ourse of investigation succeed in getting 2 3 of the senate to remove him but millions of people still think he is legitimately they are, that they are being deprived of the voice that they believe this guy would give them, then the underpinnings of democracy might be shaken. We dont really want 60 million alienated people running around, some of them rather well armed. The stability of the country is fragile thing, and in much of the book, we explore what ive spent decades thinking about but never examining as systematically as we did here. In much of the book, we explore how to navigate the shoals of skyla and charybdis scylla and charybdis, that is what can we do with an outofcontrol president . I was one of the people who thought even as early as midnight on tuesday november the i guess it was the 8th, 2016, that the time was ripe to begin mpeaching the fella. [laughter] mr. Tribe because we talked a good bit about the importance of his not being simultaneously the wner of lots of companies that would be, if not bribed, at least greased by foreign powers in violation of i mentioned it earlier the emoluments clause. Its not just a technical provision, one of the things the framers most feared was foreign influence over our president. One of the things they most feared was the fact that we couldnt necessarily tell when that influence had yielded fruit. Do we know why the president was so slow in enforcing the magniski sanctions . We suspect there is a connection between that and help from putin getting elected, and a book published by james clapper, facts and fears, may well prove decisive. Clapper concludes, hes a former cautious intelligence guy who erved under many president s as dni and other similar capacities conclude not only is our Intelligence Community had fully concluded that russia directed by putin deliberately sought to help trump get elected as well as to hurt hillary and as well as to destabilize the country. Not only that, but hes convinced, based on the fact that it was just 80,000 votes in wisconsin and michigan and pennsylvania that made all the difference in the Electoral College, that putin was a butfor cause of this presidency. Thats a rather powerful onclusion. Its one that is based more on hunch and common sense and experience than on any particular smoking gun, but unlike the smoking gun of the watergate tapes that nixon was finally ordered to turn over, there have been lots of smoking howitzers in plain view with this president. How do we react to those . Shortly after hes elected, evidence emerges that all of the characters were meeting constantly and lying about it with russian oligarchs and members of the government. You look at the way in which our policy toward a country like qatar moves back and forth and can you plot the curve and turns out the curve exactly follows how nice qatar is being to Jared Kushner and his dad with respect to helping bail them out of the huge debt they have on 666 fifth avenue. It is not simply that this guy is a kleptocrat, but the creptocracy that is directing the Foreign Policy of the united states. Thats disastrous, but doesnt immediately translate into the conclusion that we ought therefore to pull the impeachment cord and start that process rolling. I thought we should start with this investigation the day after he was elected. Certainly when he was inaugurated. When he fired comey, that was clear, open and shut corrupt interference with an ongoing investigation. It was certainly obstruction of justice, like one of the main impeachment charge against nixon. And so i wrote an oped in the Washington Post four days later calling for the immediate initiation of impeachment inquiry. I was nervous about how far and how fast people like tom steyer were going. They werent calling just for investigation. They were saying impeach now. As if there was a way to do that with a constructive outcome. Four days after i wrote that oped, rosenstein appointed special counsel mueller. That, for me, was a sign. Not that some guy on a white horse was going come riding in and make it all transparent and clear and convince the people who believe anything that trump says that what mueller has discovered is true. I never thought that. I always realized there would be things that trump could do to underfine the faith of the American People in robert mueller, despite his integrity and despite how bipartisan his support was when he was named. But it did seem to me that while that probe was going on, and its been extraordinarily productive with guilty pleas and people cooperating and indictments that while the robe was going on, we should hold steady, that we shouldnt jump ahead. We should continue investigating. We have a chapter in our book that i think joshua will enjoy describing because its fun to write. I think it will be fun to read, about impeachment talk and how dangerous it can be to have too much of it, but its not dangerous to have too much impeachment thought, and impeachment reading and impeachment understanding. As the American People need to understand what this tool is, where it came from. When its not wise to use it. Why the problem is not simply one of thumbs up or thumbs down, hes committed an Impeachable Offense or hasnt, but what should the frame of reference be thinking about when it makes sense to use this extraordinary power . And we use the history of impeachment and the strange abuses of that power. Not only with respect to clinton, but there were people who wanted to impeach Thomas Jefferson because he was rather slow to appoint a new collector of the port of boston. Now i like boston, and i wish jefferson moved a little more quickly, and i wish he hasnt, you know, held onto so many slaves. All kinds of things. But policy differences and ambient badness does not make he case for impeachment. We talk also about how president tyler was impeached because of his hyperactive veto pen. That was a good example how impeachment should not be used. When you disagree very often with the president , and when, in fact, we present a general theory of how to approach impeachment, and i suppose you could call it the shoe on the other foot theory. That is if youre ready to remove a president and believe you can generate a powerful and deep bipartisan consensus, in circumstances where you come out the same way even if you felt the opposite way about the president , even if you love this president s policies, if you were ready to conclude that you would in that event still make the fateful move to try removing a president through this power, then youve passed the, you might call it, for fans who are fans of john rawls, the veil of gnorance test. That is not knowing exactly who you are and which side of the political rubicon you stand on, you are ready to think this person is so dangerous to the persistence of the republic, that he really ought to go. And i think i probably ought to go. Ive been talking longer than i meant to, and i want very much to have you all hear from joshua, but im most especially want us to have time for q a. Thank you so much. [applause] mr. Matz well, im glad that larry spoke so much because it means ill only speak a little because we want to leave time for q a. One thing i should highlight is that much like the book itself, im not going to say much about resident trump, apart from the following we in writing the book came to at a particular moment in time, where we thought there was a president who was doing terrible things, that he was breaking the law, upsetting norms, that have brought the presidency into accord with the needs of constitutional democracy and destabilizing our position around the world, and it was clear there was going to be sustained impeachment pressure throughout trumps presidency. I think we can all agree that impeachment talk will be with us for many years to come, and so the question for us was a general question, when you have a president with whom you strongly disagree and you think are doing things bad for the society, under what circumstance do you reach for the big red button, where you break the glass and all sorts of bad potential consequences but worth it to save the society . When do you instead choose other means of engaging with the president , of constraining his abuses, of thwarting norm violations and trying to keep the ship of state afloat to the next president ial election. And so for us, the question was never impeach our nothing, it was impeach or what else . And when is impeachment really the right move . As we saw, it there are basically six questions that you have to ask and answer in order to make that decision, and it was those six questions that structured our book. And we ask them at a pretty high level of generality, though we provide tons of historical examples and support from constitutional law and do at times speak about trump. The very first question is to begin at the beginning, why is there an impeachment power . What were the framers trying to do when they included this process in the constitution . And start by talking about benjamin franklin, who at the Constitutional Convention got up and said if we dont provide a way to get rid of the president peacefully, they will assassinate him. As he saw it, World History was pretty clear on this, that the stories that the frameers knew of failed leaders was a tale of assassinations, coups, revelation and other sad endings for everyone involved and thought there had to be a way to break the cycle. For him this ancient english doctrine, fallen into disuse on the other side of the ocean but the colonists internalized as English Common law and said we can remove the president in a way that imminently threatens Society Without killing him, without generally destabilizing the country as a whole, and the question of when you can do that and who can you do that was to the framers intimately linked to the question of what will the checks and balances look like . You know the question of whos going to be the president was linked to the question who can remove the president and when and why, and there were concerns with creating a system where you could have an adventurous, creative, energetic president , who could flex muscle and use powers in ways that were not foreseen but who could be ejected. And that understanding of what they were trying to do ran throughout their thought process, and we talk about the framers not because we think their word is final. The constitution belongs to the living, but rather because in order to understand the impeachment power week think its vital to have a grip where it came from and what its role is in the broader constitutional scheme. And so in the first chapter we end by divining three impeachment lessons. The first is it was put in place to prevent abuses of executive power. The power vested in the presidency, but you have to give a fair bit of leeway, the constitution underspecifies what the powers of the president really are, and they have evolved in extraordinary ways across time. On the one hand you have to watch for abuse of power but on the other hand, you need to measure that against evolving understanding against the president s role in american life. Second lesson is that in general, partisanship should not play a role in impeachment, and impeachments motivated by partisan or personal animus have not only historically failed and been condemned, if one were to succeed, the longterm consequences could be quite dire because they would destabilize elections as something we use to define who is going to govern our society for periods of time, and the settlement provided by elections is important to maintaining stability. And the last thing we emphasize is though its tempting to focus on watergate as the obvious case for when you should impeach, the impeachment power is saffier than that. It can attach where you have the president orbiting the cia to destroy his political enemies but can also attach where you ave a kleptocraft, where you have someone corrupt, a highfunctioning moron, anyone who uses their powers in ways that threaten to undermine our democracy as such. So we turn to chapter two to what is presented as the only relevant question. What is a high crime and misdemeanor . Put differently, what justifies impea