On Monday's edition of CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360," Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe excoriated his former colleague Alan Dershowitz's argument that President Donald Trump's conduct cannot be impeachable without specific crimes.
"We've got a president who was shaking down a foreign government for his own benefit, for his own re-election. He was using taxpayer money to do it," said Tribe. "He is engaged in the kind of abuse that Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, any of our framers would have said requires that we end the presidency, especially when the abuse goes to meddling in the next election. And when Alan Dershowitz or anybody, although I don't know anybody else who really does it, comes up and says, well, it's an abuse but it's not a crime or crime-like, and therefore we can't remove him for it. That really — that's disgusting. There is no basis in the Constitution or in our history for that."
"It means that if Abraham Lincoln had said, oh, hell, let the South go, or give it to some — let's give it to France, that wouldn't have been a crime, but surely it would been impeachable. Alan in his own book — his own book gives the example, if Trump decided to give Alaska back to Putin, that might be terrible, but it wouldn't be impeachable. Well, that is just BS. And I think it's really sad that the country pays attention to these ludicrous arguments. They wouldn't pay attention but for the fact that he is star on Fox News and he used to do a lot of criminal defense work. That's fine, and he was a great teacher, and he used to be a good colleague. But right now he's selling out, basically, selling out, I don't think for money, but just for attention."
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