Trump's proposed pardons are a clear threat to 'do the coup all over again': Laurence Tribe
On Monday's edition of CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360," former Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe — who taught Attorney General Merrick Garland as a law student — urged him to prosecute former President Donald Trump for his role in that January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
"I believe [Garland] has a spine," said Tribe. "I believe that he is not going to let this former president threaten him and say come and get me, I dare you, make my day. That's what he is saying ... we don't negotiate with terrorists. We certainly don't lay down in front of them and let them walk all over us, and this is domestic terrorism. He is saying, I will do the coup all over again, and if it has to get violent, it'll get violent."
"Let me just ask you," said Cooper. "Should the Attorney General of the United States take into account potential ramifications of charging a former president with something? I mean... in this country, the idea of, you know, one party in power, and the attorney general investigating a former president. That raises all sorts of — many people will see that as political, might see that as political. Should the attorney general take that into account?"
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"Well, politics either way," said Tribe. "He certainly should take into account the fact that if he does not pursue the evidence that is now in front of us, that will be transparently political and cowardly. Yes, of course, it's not a routine thing to charge a former president. It's also not a routine thing to have a former president who openly confesses that he tried to overturn the election in which he lost. It's not a common thing for us to have a former president who wants to turn this into a dictatorship, that's what's unusual. Of course, we don't want to go after somebody for vindictive reasons. That's not the point. The point is to hold him accountable so that he doesn't do it again, and only convicting him of aid and comfort to an insurrection would disqualify him from ever running again."
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