Dershowitz, Tribe spar over impeachment: You'd have 'gone apoplectic' if Clintons received same treatment

close

Video

Dershowitz flunks Mueller effort

Says prosecutor should have made final call.

Harvard legal scholars Alan Dershowitz and Laurence Tribe sparred on Twitter Monday over the prospect of the House of Representatives pursuing the impeachment of President Trump.

Dershowitz, a professor emeritus at Harvard, called out Tribe -- a Harvard professor of constitutional law -- over a Washington Post column in which Tribe said House Democrats should proceed on impeachment even if they never try Trump in the Senate.

Tribe wrote that, "It seems fair to surmise, then, that an impeachment inquiry conducted with ample opportunity for the accused to defend himself before a vote by the full House would be at least substantially protected, even if not entirely bullet-proofed, against a Senate whitewash.

"The House, assuming an impeachment inquiry leads to a conclusion of Trump’s guilt, could choose between presenting articles of impeachment even to a Senate pre-committed to burying them and dispensing with impeachment as such while embodying its conclusions of criminality or other grave wrongdoing in a condemnator ‘Sense of the House’ resolution far stronger than a mere censure."

OCASIO-CORTEZ WANTS TO MAKE IT EASIER TO STUDY MAGIC MUSHROOMS, OTHER PSYCHEDELIC DRUGS

Video

Tribe wrote that such a strategy could turn out similarly to the 1974 investigation of President Richard Nixon, "nourishing the hope that a public fully educated about what this president did would make even a Senate beholden to this president and manifestly lacking in political courage willing to bite the bullet and remove him."

Dershowitz said Tribe's argument is contrary to how the framers of the Constitution viewed impeachment, arguing Tribe "would have gone apoplectic" if Republicans had done the same thing to Bill or Hillary Clinton.

Tribe countered by accusing Dershowitz of not reading the article and said he "NEVER proposed 'impeach[ing] POTUS' without 'referring it to the Senate for trial.'”

"I left open ‘DISPENSING with impeachment’ and ‘embodying [House] conclusions of criminality … in a … resolution far stronger than a mere censure,'" he responded.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

The two also battled on Twitter a week ago, with Dershowitz claiming his predictions on legal matters pertaining to President Trump have been far more accurate.

Tribe argued that his approach to "ending Trump's disastrous presidency" is worthwhile because it would "reduce the odds of Trump’s re-election and prevent future Trumps even if it doesn’t lead to his removal, but could also make his removal more likely.