The first thing that hits you when you read something by or about Laurence Tribe is Carl Loeb, which is a bit ironic given that Loeb made his fortune as a Wall Street financier. But it’s right there, front and center, of his Washington Post op-ed.
By Laurence H. Tribe
Laurence H. Tribe is Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School.
The time has come for Congress to launch an impeachment investigation of President Trump for obstruction of justice.
It’s an impressive thing, to hold an endowed seat at Harvard Law School. He has attributed credibility. And, indeed, Larry Tribe has done much in his career to earn that credibility, even though he’s done a few things to raise questions as well.
But Larry now has a serious issue to raise, one worthy of valuable real estate in the WaPo.
The remedy of impeachment was designed to create a last-resort mechanism for preserving our constitutional system. It operates by removing executive-branch officials who have so abused power through what the framers called “high crimes and misdemeanors” that they cannot be trusted to continue in office.
Sure, people have been screaming for Trump’s impeachment before he even took office, but those are just silly people. Not serious people like Larry Tribe.
Ample reasons existed to worry about this president, and to ponder the extraordinary remedy of impeachment, even before he fired FBI Director James B. Comey and shockingly admitted on national television that the action was provoked by the FBI’s intensifying investigation into his campaign’s ties with Russia.
Even without getting to the bottom of what Trump dismissed as “this Russia thing,” impeachable offenses could theoretically have been charged from the outset of this presidency. One important example is Trump’s brazen defiance of the foreign emoluments clause, which is designed to prevent foreign powers from pressuring U.S. officials to stray from undivided loyalty to the United States. Political reality made impeachment and removal on that and other grounds seem premature.
There are certainly significant issues here, though Tribe’s leap to the conclusion, “Trump’s brazen defiance,” for example, suggests that Larry isn’t about to await any sort of legal analysis or facts to stand in the way of achieving his goal of ridding America of this blight. It’s not that these aren’t issues, and haven’t been raised by others in more substantive fashion, but Carl Loeb’s seat-warmer is on a mission.
No longer. To wait for the results of the multiple investigations underway is to risk tying our nation’s fate to the whims of an authoritarian leader.
Just how far is Larry Tribe prepared to go to save the nation and sell his soul? Much farther than anyone would have ever expected of this lion of Harvard Law.
On April 22, Tribe shared a story from a website called the Palmer Report — a site that has been criticized for and — entitled “Report: Trump gave $10 million in Russian money to Jason Chaffetz when he leaked FBI letter,” a reference to the notorious pre-election letter sent by former FBI director James Comey to members of Congress that many have blamed for Hillary Clinton’s November loss.
The “report” the article points to is a since-deleted tweet by a Twitter user named LM Garner, who describes herself in her Twitter biography as “Just a VERY angry citizen on Twitter. Opinions are my own. Sometimes prone to crazy assertions. Not a fan of this nepotistic kleptocracy.” Garner, who has 257 followers, has tweeted more than 25,000 times from her protected account.
Fake news? That hardly seems to cover the utterly batshit crazy conspiracy stuff Larry has latched onto here.
“I don’t know whether this is true,” Tribe’s tweet reads, “But key details have been corroborated and none, to my knowledge, have been refuted. If true, it’s huge.”
Key details? Sounds serious. None refuted. Really serious. And if true, it’s not just huge. It’s HUGE!!! How could the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School do any less than to spread the word, lend his Loebness to the notion that this conspiracy could be HUGE!!!
Reached by email, Tribe said that he was aware of the Palmer Report’s “generally liberal slant” and “that some people regard a number of its stories as unreliable.” Still, he added, “When I share any story on Twitter, typically with accompanying content of my own that says something like ‘If X is true, then Y,’ I do so because a particular story seems to be potentially interesting, not with the implication that I’ve independently checked its accuracy or that I vouch for everything it asserts.”
Of course, the usual caveat, that a retwit isn’t an endorsement, so that there remains a level of plausible deniability, much as was the case when Larry was twitting that Trump was a space alien sent here by a malevolent race to find a new food source.
Asked whether he had considered his role in spreading unconfirmed information, given his stature in American society, Tribe responded that “I really don’t have anything to tell you about my thoughts regarding my personal role in sharing information over social media in this usually agnostic manner.”
Larry isn’t a Trump hater. Larry doesn’t wear a tin foil hat when he teaches class at Harvard Law School. Larry just wants to share info over social media in “this usually agnostic manner.” You know, for the sake of America, just in case it’s HUGE!!!
Some might question the propriety of the Carl Loeb prawf at Harvard Law School spreading the insane conspiracy nonsense that has captured the interest of the likes of Louise Mensch, a totally legit Brit who definitely seems like a reliable source for Tribe to spread about, just in case it’s true. Then it would be HUGE!!!
The question is not whether Trump has committed a high crime or misdemeanor, or whether he should be impeached. The question is whether Carl Loeb would be pleased with the idea that the professor who sits in his endowed seat should be on the twitters giving the twitting prez a run for his money on who can spread the most factually baseless crap possible.
Impeach Tribe!
Are you sure that he is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard and not the Richard Albert Loeb Professor as he is merely demonstrating his perceived intellectual superiority in carrying out the perfect crime by using any and all lies necessary to remove this president? You know the concept, any port in a storm to save this nation will do.
This shows his students that he is not merely capable of validating false tweets, but already truly a living legend in his own mind.
SHG, I am pleased to nominate Professor Tribe for the Paul Krugman prize for the best hyperbolic essay written by a professor at an elite institution that makes credulous readers even dumber. All the best.
RGK
That comes with a cash prize,* right Judge?
*Asking for Carl Loeb.
SHG,
There is a HUGE prize, but it is not “cash,” at least in normal parlance. The prize comes in bitcoins. Cryptocurrency for a crypto-intellectual.
All the best.
RGK
PS. As in all things, I am certain that Paul Krugman, the namesake for this prestigious prize, is an expert in bitcoin. By the way, a certain mutual friend in Las Vegas is also an expert. I’m betting he’s shorting the bitcoin market as we speak. He makes the margin calls with puppies.
Not just any puppies. Adorable puppies. Each and every one, as adorable as the next.
I held Professor Tribe and his 1978 Con Law hornbook in high regard when I was in law school and thereafter. Then 15-20 years later, when the impeachment mess arose for President Clinton, I eventually noticed that Professor Tribe was nowhere to be seen on the Sunday news programs. He was a frequent guest on these shows when constitutional issues were in the public eye and was often quoted in articles by the MSM reporters covering such matters. It was like he had moved to Antarctica.
Puzzled, I went back and looked at his hornbook on the law regarding presidential impeachment. What he had written, if accepted, would’ve been deadly to President Clinton and his supporters’ arguments. Then it all became clear why he was laying low.
Partisanship trumps everything.
Academic and intellectual integrity should only be used for good, not evil. Of course, good means whatever Larry Tribe says it means.
“I really don’t have anything to tell you about my thoughts regarding my personal role in sharing information over social media in this usually agnostic manner.”
“Agnostic” would mean he believed it was impossible to verify the accuracy of the stories or the reliability of the sources. I would say the word he is looking for is “apathetic” but maybe what he means is “reckless disregard as to the falsity”. It’s almost as if he wants the notoriety of being sued. Or he’s had a Loebotomy.
Loebotomy. Well played.
Carl Loeb is certainly pleased with professor Tribe sharing this story on Twitter, without vouching for its accuracy, assuming that Carl Loeb is a weasel breeder. And weasel coffee is the best, so Loeb probably is!
“I don’t know whether this is true,” Tribe’s tweet reads, “But key details have been corroborated and none, to my knowledge, have been refuted. If true, it’s huge.”
– Donald Trump is President? Check.
– Russia is a country? Check. And it has money, specifically Russian money?
Check.
– 10 million is a real, not made-up number? Check.
Prof. Tribe may be on to something. Fire up the impeachment train!
Interestingly, Carl Loeb does not have a Wikipedia page.
His NYT obit – http://www.nytimes.com/1985/08/14/nyregion/carl-m-loeb-jr-dead-at-81-founder-of-anticrime-group.html – indicates Loeb made his fortune in metals and Wall Street brokerage.
“(Loeb) was also a limited partner in Loeb, Rhoades & Company, a brokerage and investment banking firm his father, Carl, had helped found, and which became part of the company now known as Shearson Lehman Brothers Inc.” You need serious coin to secure Harvard Chair naming rights, I assume.
On the demerit side, he inflicted McGruff on us: “Mr. Loeb, a former vice chairman of the board of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, left that group in 1981 to help found the National Crime Prevention Council in 1982 and serve as its chairman.”
Let’s all take a bite out of crime.
Are you operating under the assumption that anyone interested in learning more about Carl Loeb does not have access to Google and requires assistance? Because that would be unnecessarily kind of you.
Shilling as he does, he’d have made a great Ferengi. And he’s already got at least one Loeb!
But, as with the Ferengi, scanners pick up nothing of any real substance.
The things that people do make you wonder about their incentives or special-interest. What’s to be gained? Compare this to what people in other respected positions in what they could say to the masses, not just politicians, but federal judges, governors, or members of the SCOTUS as well as others in important positions in our society such as newspaper editors. Imagine if the CDC or NASA were politicized about threats and information to the masses. The If and maybe scenarios would unnecessarily create a lot of talk, distractions, and may make unproductive gray clouded situations or atmospheres. Now compare to what if others just did the same could risk, such as reputations, simply by being misunderstood like sheriffs, political candidates, prosecutors and other established attorneys or firms just getting established. That would be a clear mistake, this past election resulted in this. The integrity just goes out the window. So it makes no sense to me how people who reach certain levels forget how they got there and what they are doing to actually make amateurish mistakes; without any insight to their actions and risk to their own integrity, which to me is your purpose, your dignity. For the ones who do not agree with the current administration, you can look elsewhere for leaders, who do not throw out misleading possibilities. Just consider with strong reputation built establishments such as Harvard Law school, even through its esteemed members, fallacy can exist through propaganda anywhere. In this segment of the digital information age and Information technology that yields tons of information for all of us, sadly we must filter the sources of content for authenticity. Why? Because we capture purposeful nonsense.
Protip: paragraph breaks.
Who appointed you? Can’t you just read?
Actually, we are in agreement. But how to explain?
Why do you ask questions when you already know the answer?