Harvard professor Laurence Tribe explains how Devin Nunes is enabling Trump's witch-hunt lies against Mueller

Constitution legal scholar and Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe called for Congress to conduct a "broad, open, public investigation" into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign during a Wednesday interview with MSNBC anchor Katy Tur.

Prof. Tribe is a co-author, with Joshua Matz, of the new book To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment.

"President Trump says the Russia investigation is all fake," Tur noted. "He's called the probe into interference in the 2016 election and his campaign's possible ties to it a witch-hunt over 50 times on Twitter."

"What's become apparent in recent months is the president is waging a public campaign, trying to tear down the credibility of the investigators in order to save himself," she reported.

Tur then noted efforts by Democrats to undermine Special Prosecutor Ken Starr during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

"The tactics, the way they're going about tearing down the investigator, are kind of familiar," Tur observed.

"It's a familiar tactic, sort of the tactic of anybody who is being investigated, you try to discredit the investigator," Tribe noted. "The big difference is that in this case there are a lot of indictments that have been handed down, a lot of guilty plea, the attempt to make it look like a witch-hunt is more difficult."

"But the talent of Donald Trump in telling repeatedly the big lie, that there were spies in his campaign, that there's nothing there, there's no obstruction -- that talent is holding him pretty well," he concluded.

"What is needed is a broad, open, public investigation in which there are witnesses that are actually subpoenaed and in the House Intelligence Committee or the House Judiciary Committee does the kind of thing that happened in the Nixon period, when there was a ten-month period when the public really was brought on board," Tribe counseled.

"Why do you think that hasn't been done in the case?" Tur asked. "Why has there not been open public testimony?

"Trey Gowdy (R-SC) says there has been no misconduct by the FBI, but everything is in the hands of Devin Nunes (R-CA)," Tribe replied. "Devin Nunes is in cahoots with the White House, it's pretty clear."

"You have a president going out screaming 'witch-hunt, witch-hunt, witch-hunt' and making this extremely political and partisan," Tur noted.

"He knows how to do it," the Harvard Law professor replied. "He is a very effective entertainer and gradually gets people to believe what he says as long as he says it often enough."

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