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 impeachment . Under the constitution, interpreting it in good faith, when is it appropriate to remove the president from power . There are some folks and gerald ford said this back in the 1970s when nixon was trying to impeach Justice Douglas there are folks who say the high crime and misdemeanor is whatever Congress Says it is and nothing more to the story and all of the legal stuff misses the underlying politics of it all. We think thats right but uninterestingly so. Its right only if you think people in congress are not acting by reference to understandings they and constituents have what high crimes and misdemeanors means and only wrong if you think theyre real bad faith actors who dont care about the constitution and value and structure and we have to hope that thats not the case because as ill emphasize, the constitution gives Congress Many tough judgments to make and doesnt tell them how to make them. All of this ultimately depends to some degree on the proper functioning of political system and officials. And so thinking about high crimes and misdemeanors, were asking when the president is engaging in high crimes and misdemeanors, our bottom line is when the president has acted in a manner that renders him unviable as a leader of Democratic State and poses risk or future damage to our society if hes allowed to remain in office. Impeachment is not about punishing him for something he did. You can indict him after he leaves office. It is about preventing him from exercising his power in a harmful way Going Forward. So when is the president Going Forward a real risk to society . And there we emphasize at some length that corruption, betrayal or use of power coupled with intentional and evil deed that risk injury to the nation define the idea of Impeachable Offense. They are basically something so plainly wrong that no reasonable president could profess surprise at being impeached on the grounds. Thats obviously as larry said not the same as committing a crime. Some crimes are impeachable, some Impeachable Offenses may not be crimes. The question is if we survive this presidency, what nation will we become and will we be a democracy anymore . In that chapter we address the allegations relating to president trump, identifying a few that we think could potentially justify impeachment but explaining why some of the others that have been raised in the public probably dont. This leads me to the question we think everyone should be asking but no one ever seems to, which is when should congress exercise the power not to impeach. If the president has committed a high crime and misdemeanor or bribery or treason which justifies the president s removal from office. Congress doesnt have to impeach, the constitution doesnt establish the house as a roving commission to smyte every wrongdoer and doesnt mandate they exercise the most extreme weapon when they could theoretically be justified. Instead, here as in so many other cases, the constitution gives congress this power along with many others including the power of censure, the power of the purse, power of personnel, powers of investigation and oversight, powers to legislate, and says figure out what you need to use to deal with the problem at hand, and if you think about impeachment that way, not as is there a high crime and misdemeanor, if so, surely we must do this. But instead as one power on a continuum of others in restraining a president whos gone off the rails, the framework looks different. Every power especially the great powers of the constitution come with a price when exercised, and the potential price of impeachment is great. In Chapter Three of the book and ill sketch it out, we basically say in thinking about impeachment, have you three questions to ask, what if we impeach too early. What are the risks of impeaching ot at all or too late . Instead, as one power on a continuum of others in restraining a president whos one off the rails, the whole framework looks different. Every power, especially the great powers of the constitution, come with a price when exercised, and the potential price of impeachment is great. In Chapter Three of the book, and ill sketch it out, we basically say, in thinking about impeachment, have you three questions to ask, what if we impeach too early . What are the risks of impeaching not at all or too late and what risks are unavoidable in any impeachment, no matter how well timed and well justified . And there we tried to provide a broad framework we think can apply to any presidency to come, to emphasize the judgment calls that have to be made among great uncertainty about what the future may hold and how people will respond to an effort to end the presidency. And, of course, the main driver in that effort is always congress, and this brings us to chapter four, where we talk about the role that congress should play. They considered the house, the senate, the Supreme Court, the senate and the Supreme Court sitting together, a council of all of the state governors, a petition of the state legislatures and committee of the chief justice of all of the state Supreme Courts. These are people who left no stone unturned, including stones they were actively creating at the Constitutional Convention. And ultimately, they settled on congress as a branch to exercise this power. And to understand what that means, we not only talk about why they gave it to them, but how congress understood that power. These questions are not answered by the constitution. What should the trial process be . Should there be evidence . Should there be lawyers . What is the standard of proof . How do you set about adjudicating articles of impeachment . And we provide a comprehensive tour from beginning to end how impeachment actually works, and emphasize that the way in which congress has designed the process reveals its understanding of the values at stake. First among them being the importance of making the process fair and impartial and legitimate, because at the end of the day, the American People need to accept congress judgment. Even people strongly opposed to it from the beginning, and the least congress owes the people of this country is fairness. Now this leads us in turn to the fifth chapter of the book, where we step back. Theres a lot of impeachment talk going around. Members of congress are expected to have opinions whether you should impeach president trump. I suspect many people in this room might have some thoughts on that matter as well. Thats not normal. You know, when i was writing this book, i called my grandparents pretty early on and said were writing a book about impeachment and they said, thats funny, i dont remember that being a thing people talked about. When the president did something bad, no one raced to the air and was like, we must impeach him. They definitely did not have impeachment, but in fairness, that is because they did not have the internet. His reaction struck a chord with me. Why do we live in an era where impeachment is a default response to allegations of president ial wrongdoing in politics . How does that situate in u. S. History . It turns out when you go back, as we do it chapter five, and look at every impeachment resolution introduced in the house, every mention of impeachment in congress, and every Major National Political Movement that had impeachment as a prominent theme, that we do live in strange times, that there were a few flashes and fizzles of this up until the end of the civil war, that impeachment vanished from the National Scene until truman. When truman fired douglas macarthur, a national cry laced with impeachment talk which happened one year later as he seized the steel mills, and the resident fell from the scene until nixon and after nixon it disappeared until after irancontra. It appeared a little bit more during that period with reagan and bush. It wasnt until bill clinton and the clinton impeachment, and ever since then that impeachment was a dominant motif how americans think about politics and the presidency. In that period, what is alarming to me is theres been a ton of impeachment talk with no discernible benefit and quite a few harms. Certainly it doesnt appear to be the case that president s are notably more constrained or likely to be impeached in this period of time, if anything, hyperpartisanship suggests they are less likely to be. Mustering a National Consensus to do so is all the more difficult. At the same time, this massive oversupply of impeachment talk has given our politics more existential character, it encouraging tribalism and polarization, and worse, it can help the president who is abusing his power because as we saw under bush, obama, and now trump, president s facing impeachment threats from the ideological extreme of the other side use them to motivate their base, enhance funds and enhance loyalty from within their own political party, and worse, a party that promises to impeach historically loses in the midterm elections. In that way, a party that overdoses on impeachment talk may suffer in its ability to restrain the president in other means. We worry, in chapter five, that we live in a strange new world of impeachment talk that the president , including president s who misuse power may benefit, and the underlying dynamics of democracy may suffer from the change. We suggest a simple answer. People need to chill out a little bit. This is a running theme of our book, impeachment is an act of judgment. The constitution only sketches in vague terms when it is necessary and appropriate. What it ultimately asks of us is judgment to understand which powers to use, which political strategies to invoke, what manners of understanding our democracy are most appropriate to meet the threat of a rogue president . Impeachment is not always the right first. It is also not always the right last move. And this leads us in our final chapter to ask a very simple question, can the impeachment power achieve its basic purpose in a world of broken politics . The answer is simple. By requiring the super majority in the senate, the u. S. Constitution essentially makes a wager on the u. S. People. It gambles that president ial wrongdoing will arouse durable bipartisan opposition Strong Enough to overcome partisanship and polarization and inertia and all of the dynamics that otherwise interfere with Effective Governance in our country. That gamble doesnt seem wellplaced these days. Alternate facts, tribalism, all the buzzwords that we see all the time that amount to decline in democratic function have made it difficult, if not impossible, to muster the national will and and consensus that impeachment asks of us. Thats not to say it can never happen and should never happen, but is to say especially so long as people attach the fantastical consequences to impeachment, so long as the president s opponents view it as a cureall, something that will solve all their problems and set the world aright, and as long as supporters see it as a doomsday device, one that threatens to implode in everything they fought for, the impeachment power cant function, that the constitution requires the American People to think clearly and to think reasonably and creates a scenario which if they dont, impeachment may serve only to undermine rather than to protect our democracy. So although this is a book that is called to end a presidency, in some ways a better title might have been to save democracy. That is the ultimate goal of the impeachment power, and it is a goal that can only be achieved if the American People fully and realistically understand the appropriate way to exercise it. [applause] now we have a costume change. [laughter] friends, countrymen, lend us our questions. Thank you so much for being here, and thank you to both of you for your words. The question that i have is related to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson in 1858. Of course, a kansas senator provided the crucial votes which acquitted president johnson by ne vote. One thing i was wondering is if you perhaps know if senator roth left any of his thoughts and writings that provide what motivated him . Prof. Tribe i dont think i do, nd i suspect that joshua may not, but i want to answer unless im wrong, i want to answer a somewhat broader question. We look at the impeachment of Andrew Johnson and the failure to remove him as a good example of why its important to be precise about the reasons for saying that someone ought to be removed. In johnsons case, they ended up with a terrible reason. They said it was because he would not go along with the senate with respect to stanton, that is he fired stanton without senate consent. Stanton was the secretary of war. It turned out that the act he was said to have violated, the enure of office act, was not that much long afterwards held unconstitutional. So the whole theory of the impeachment really missed the mark. What was really wrong was johnson, and what we might argue have justified his removal. It would have gotten the extra ote . We really dont know. Johnson was trying to undo the result of the civil war. He was fundamentally hostile to lincolns whole program and to the idea of the union and to the elimination of slavery. It was over that broad question he was a Destructive Force that we think ought probably to have been removed. Fastening on the right reason is something we dont really speculate about. Thank you. When the case for impeachment was clear was with president nixon, and if president nixon had not resigned, and if he had been impeached, would he have been convicted and removed from office . Mr. Matz the historical evidence strongly suggests he would have been. Part of the reason he ultimately did resign is a delegation of prominent republican senators went to him and said youre going to lose in our chamber. And at the time, his popularity ratings had been plummeting. He had essentially sabotaged all of his relationships with the Republican Leadership in congress, and National Impeachment sentiment, which was first polled in this period of time increased steadily until it hit 57 at the time he resigned in august of 1974. So it seemed clear thats the direction the nation was trending in. Whats interesting about the nixon case, we talk about this in the book, particularly at the end of chapter four, it illuminates what factors make it more likely that congress will impeach and provides a case study to see when the stars will align where that can be possible. And nixon did everything sort of wrong. By the end of his career, political judgment almost completely escaped him. Choosing gerald ford on the mistaken theory that no one would be willing to make that man a president. Oops. He referred to him as insurance policy, turns out insurance of something quite different. And other respects, sabotaging relationships with the press, digging in rather than admitting wrongdoing, fighting to the end, destroying relationships with his own party. Nixon, at the end, though not at the beginning did everything wrong. It is a sign of not only how power can corrupt, but power can reveal, and in that circumstance, nixons pretensions to absolute power and the manner in which he responded to the impeachment investigation was itself evidence of the fact he should have been removed. And this is a point we emphasize in Chapter Three, where we talk about the risks of impeaching too early, that the manner in which the president responds to accusations of wrongdoing, or the manner in which trump responds to the Mueller Investigation in congress may itself provide the most important evidence available to us whether this is someone who we can leave in the white house, and that was a big part of what was going in nixons final days. His own response to the crisis proved he had to go. I think the nation saw that. Prof. Tribe let me add one thing to that. One reason we dont have the counterfactual history, that is we dont have nixon sticking it out and testing the question whether, in the end, he would have been removed, is that he had a sense of shame. That differentiates him significantly from certain other president s. That is, he did not want to go down in utter ignominy, whereas there are some president s who might relate who might really get off on the fight and enjoy the gladiatorial spectacle in which they will be at center stage. Another fundamental difference, though the democrats controlled the house at the time, another fundamental difference is there were moderates in the republican party. There were people we dont normally think of goldwater as a oderate. We think of him as holding down the right end of the republican party. In fact, goldwater was a kind of mccainlike figure in some ways, he was someone who was not sort of absolutely stuck in the mud with a particular loyalty, not to the country, not to the constitution, but to a specific faction and a specific president. It would be hard to find the republican statespersons today who would go trump and tell him, mr. President , the jig is up. And it would be hard to imagine him listening. This makes this moment an incredibly perilous one. If we could reserve it for folks who are standing up there. If you would like to ask a question, please. Thank you for the answer. Ill take it as two yeses. I agree with you. I mean, i understand why impeachment is probably not a wise move forward, but you know, our democracy is at risk, and what do we do . Prof. Tribe so, you know, writing this book was a very traumatic exercise, for me especially. I started out much more flamingly eager to get rid of this monster than joshua did. Mr. Matz i want to be very clear, im not a fan of him either. [laughter] its a difference of method. Prof. Tribe its a difference of method, and you are more naturally balanced than i am. [laughter] prof. Tribe the chemistry is good, because i tend to start as a firebrand, and then gradually, joshua manages to convince me that even though it may feel good to vent, the temperature has to be turned down. So writing this book, i mean, as i would do these passages, i would say to myself, but everyone will say, how can you stand not getting rid of him . And the answer always has to be, there are many other avenues. When you see the metoo movement, when you see the kids mobilizing and registering people to vote and saying well never vote for anyone who was not for very strong gun safety measures, when you see marches that are as large as any in the history of the country, i see the possibility not quite as large when he was at his inauguration. Prof. Tribe no, of course, that was the Largest Group ever. We know that. [laughter] when you see that, i get enormous home. One of the reasons i love teaching, im always in touch with the younger people and with them i think the hope of the future lies. Somebody like me who is almost 77, im not necessarily going to see the day when the country regains its senses, but i also dont think that the passionate satisfaction of voting to impeach him, only to see him vindicated in the senate, would feel very good at the end. We would be shooting ourselves in various organs. It seems to me we have to do other things. The conditions that might make it possible to actually get a large majority to vote him out are the very conditions that would allow congress in different control to perform its oversight function to subpoena some of the people that the House Intelligence Committee left on the cutting room floor, to actually expose to the light of day a lot of what has been going on. And i have faith that when its all exposed, the willingness of the country, at least to reelect him in 2020 will have dissipated, and i say that because i think thats a real possibility. One might not like to think it, we might have to live for eight years under this kind of quasi tyranny, and i think the main thing we have to do, as the doctors say, is do no harm, we should not exacerbate the chance that he will grow roots deep into the American Culture that cannot be pulled out, and it seems that from that point of view, and i saw a number of people looking very skeptical as joshua was talking about relying on congress. It does feel crazy, and he knows as well as i do to rely on ongress. The framers imagined we might have a tyrannical president. A president as we say in the book, a lowfunctioning moron, the the book i say a highfunctioning moron. [laughter] that is an example of where we had to negotiate. They imagined that might happen on the they thought wrongly the Electoral College would stop it. They didnt imagine wed have political parties. What i think they did not also imagine was we would ever have a congress as beholden to the president as supine, as spineless as this one. That creates a situation of maximum peril. The branch we most rely on to check him is a branch that has to be dramatically changed in november 2018, i would hope. We also rely on the courts, but we saw what Gorsuch Court did with respect to labor union rights and collective bargaining and collective vindication of rights, and we dont know how long kennedy will stay there. We cannot rely on anything other than we, the people, in a very large but hopefully peaceful uprising to make the ultimate difference. Mr. Matz maybe i could and two very short additions to that. One point is i feel there are folks in the country whose attitude is, the president is terrible, and the only action equal to the depth of our situation is impeachment. And theres this idea that because we face a great problem, we must invoke an equally extreme and great power to meet it. Part of what i worry about with that kind of thinking is it not only devalues other forms of Political Engagement and makes them feel beside the point against what really matters, but that it actually tends to accelerate and encourage this noholdsbarred existential view of politics in which people go from electoral loser to impeachment in waiting. Both sides use the rhetoric and i think it is well justified to president trump. But there is a question about how you stabilize the situation and the idea that its impeach or nothing because nothing else could possibly be good enough i think is dangerous. And there is one other point which is fine, lets imagine you do want to impeach. Great. Mazeltov. You have 40 of the country backing you. 60 doesnt. You are not going to impeach successfully. You dont have the votes in the house right now. I dont mean you personally. So there is a question lets imagine you do believe impeachment is the appropriate thing to do here. The question is, how do you assemble the political will and forces that you need to actually make that happen in a way that doesnt blow up in your face or vindicate the president . The question then is, is impeachment talk the best form of political messaging and rhetoric and strategy to build that Political Coalition . Maybe if you secretly really want impeachment, the best thing do is to shut up or use other forms of political messaging and rhetoric and engagement to assemble the political will and majority that can then be used to investigate and do other things which might make that more practicable. To me, the impeach or nothing mentality is wrong on the merits, and it takes for granted and assumption of restraining an outofcontrol president that does not withstand scrutiny in the historical manner. One more question. Prof. Tribe i want to say, the shut up strategy is not practical. We may shut up, but tom steyer and 30 million bucks wont. It is just like the terrible arguments that were made in korematsu, that the japanese descendents of americans must be spies because they are not doing anything wrong. They must be hiding in the weeds. People say suddenly impeachment talk is calming down, they are reading pelosis playbook. We know what the agenda is. We have to be realistic, cant stop talking about it, but have to persuade one another in dialogue that it is not right to pull that cord just yet. Another question, hopefully . To pick up on your idea of lternatives. One could almost have made the case, and ill talk about president johnson but the more recent president johnson, and whether or not his activities with the regard to continuing vietnam, lying about what was going on, finding and creating reasons for the engagement, could it arguably have constituted grounds for impeachment . And im almost as old as you, and had my own experiences in that time and day, but the point is that an alternative movement ince the dialogue arose that reated, somehow, pressure on he president to say hey, maybe i did screw up. But then we got nixon. Dont blame me. [laughter] mr. Matz but to answer your question, maybe that could have been grounds for impeachment, but impeachment was not feasible. That is, the gulf of tankan resolution was a thinly veiled mask. E know that. It seems to me, for the president or the yellow cake stuff and the reasons for going to war in iraq made up, lies, a fabric of lies, lying in order to get the nation into war, i think passes our threshold of being impeachable, but the point of much of our book is so . Its impeachable. What do you actually move to impeach . What will happen next . How will the president react . Will that build up a momentum that we need . Mr. Matz in 1983, for example, maybe other folks want to ask questions, want to give them a chance. President reagan sent u. S. Military forces to grenada without congressional authorization. A member of congress, ted weiss, said you cant do that, that is a clear misuse of president ial power. What was great about this guy is e was a real manhattan democrat. Mayor koch once said about him, weiss is the guy, who if you thought he needed to do it would impeach god, and then koch added, but the thing is hes intellectually honest, if he did impeach god, you know he would really meant it. He never got around to god, but got around to reagan. In 1983, he introduced an article of impeachment against president reagan. It was plausibly well justified. It was a nonfrivolous resolution. Its got a couple votes and died a swift death. The American Public approved what reagan had done. It looked strong and a nice way to break out in the view of the postvietnam lethargy. And so in that circumstance, like in so many others, president s use their powers in ways that a law professor could plausibly contend with a bunch of madison quotes, qualify in the high crime and misdemeanor and the question is, is american democracy imperilled and the American People think of it that way . There, nobody did, except mr. Weiss. I think that broader political question is in some ways the more important one, rather than the technical question of whether you might plausibly be able to characterize something as high crime and misdemeanor. I think there was someone behind you waiting to ask a question . This will be our last question. Sorry, i came in late. Hopefully nothing like this has been asked before. One of the things it goes to what can we do, right. And one of the things i would really love to see and participate in is if we could crowd fund and crowd investigate, collect, analyze, etc. , get a whole bunch of people to throw in 20 bucks, right, to hire folks like you guys, right . What are we going to do . We do most stuff pro bono, so [laughter] a whole list of people. I see trump as the flag at the top of this huge organization, this huge building, and the building itself, we need to take the spokes out of the wheel. One by one, collect information and prosecute individual crimes, and basically dismantle the crime machine. That is what mueller is doing. I expect him to indict quite a few more people. Yeah, but hes a fed, he has some constraints on him. I think if the question is, re lawyers and other people in Civic Society examining the Trump Organization and those around it and those in trumps inner circle and seeing if they have broken the law . My strong intuition is yes, i say that in part because i am one such person. Prof. Tribe as am i. We are working on all these. Mr. Matz we are accounts on the emoluments clause, it addresses the president s overseas mint of improper payments from foreign powers, but there are efforts afoot beyond the Mueller Investigation to do that. The more important thing is not our people looking into this, the question is, is there a Political Movement that cares about it and can translate that into something that moves the ball in terms of electoral outcomes . At the end of the day, you could put a thousand of us in the room. A thousand larrys in the room might break air through the sheer force of intellectual power. Prof. Tribe would it really take 1000 of me . [laughter] mr. Matz i love you for your modesty. [laughter] at the end of the day, a room of larry tribes is not worth nearly as much as a single vote control in the house of representatives. The question for me isnt, are people looking at the organization . The story is, is the information being found utilized in way that can shape the electoral math . Map . For me, i hope someone else is doing that, because i am busy working on the lawsuit. But i read the new york times, and seems like they are. Right. [applause] thank you, larry, and thank you, joshua. I want to remind everyone we will be forming a signing line after this event. Please pull up your chairs. Their books are right behind our register. Thank you. Mr. Matz please buy them. [laughter] youre watching American History tv. All weekend, every weekend on cspan 3. Howard rufner talks about the 1970 he took on may 4, when National Guard troops shot and killed four one of his photographs was used magazine. Er of life moments of truth. Thank you all so much for up. Ing we are hosting photograph howard who was a photograph for the yearbook and his book moment of truth surrounds the kent state studentss re four lives were lost. Please well howard ruffner
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