Harvard Law School professor emeritus Laurence Tribe laid out a scenario this weekend in which Tuesday’s midterm elections could hand the Democrats enough Senate votes to remove President Donald Trump from office. He acknowledged it would take a miracle.
“In Tuesday’s election the Republicans are defending 20 senatorial seats, to the Democrats 13,” Tribe wrote on X. “If, miraculously, the Dems were to retain all 13 of their seats and win every one of the 20 seats Republicans are defending, they would have the 67 seats and votes in the Senate needed to convict and remove Donald Trump from Office in the event of another impeachment.”
Removing a president requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate after the House impeaches. That has never happened in U.S. history. Trump was impeached twice in his first term and acquitted both times.
Tribe’s post has drawn more than 600,000 views and is pinned to the top of his profile.
Democrats have voiced growing optimism heading into Election Day, with races in red states such as Texas, Mississippi, Alaska and Iowa looking competitive. But flipping all 20 Republican-held seats on the ballot, in a cycle where many of those seats are in deep-red states, is widely seen as out of reach.
Tribe, who taught constitutional law at Harvard for half a century and wrote one of the most widely used textbooks on the subject, has been a frequent critic of Trump. He recently joined the board of advisers of the Rule of Law Project. That’s a new group of former prosecutors and human rights leaders that aims to hold Trump officials accountable for corruption and abuse.