Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe explained Friday why he believes Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell s (R-Ky.) plan to coordinate with President Donald Trump s defense team in a Senate impeachment trial may backfire.
McConnell told Fox NewsSean Hannity on Thursday that there was no chance that Trump would be removed from office over the Ukraine scandal and vowed total coordination with the White House during proceedings.
Tribe told MSNBC s Ari Melber the next day on The Beat that it was disgusting that McConnell looked like he is going to conduct this trial as though hes a member of the defense team.
You know, its an ancient principle centuries-old, actually over a millennium old that you cant be a judge on your own case, and effectively, to allow Donald Trump to call the shots violates that principle, said the scholar, who has been advising top House Democrats on the impeachment process.
Tribe continued:
The reason it may backfire is that an exoneration, if thats what emerges by a Senate that is essentially rigged and fixed so that its coordinated in this way with the defense, really doesnt 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 didnt 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.
Thats not a very good record, Tribe added.
Melber suggested Trump and McConnell may actually end up tainting their public claim to an acquittal of the president by rigging the process in Trumps favor. Tribe agreed.
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