Former Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe said Monday on CNN’s “Situation Room” that Attorney General Merrick Garland should prosecute former President Donald Trump for his action surrounding the 2020 presidential elections.
Anchor Wolf Blitzer said, “Is it dangerous, in your view, for him not to indict the former President Trump?”
Tribe said, “I think there is no excuse at this point for not going ahead with a criminal prosecution of Donald Trump. As I said in that tweet, not prosecuting him based on everything we know about the pressure campaign aimed at his vice president and everything we know about his attempts to obstruct the investigation — not prosecuting him would be giving him an unearned pardon. And even if it was earned, if Trump, and this is unthinkable, were to be contrite and to admit his guilt, the pardon power doesn’t belong to the attorney general. It’s not part of his job description.”
He added, “Those issues, the issues of whether it would bring harmony or division, those are above his pay grade, honestly, and those are questions for the pardon power. Just like, you know, when Gerald Ford decided to pardon Richard Nixon to help heal the country. It necessarily didn’t do all of that, but it was within Ford’s mandate to consider it. It’s not part of an attorney general’s mandate. He’s not healer-in-chief. He is prosecutor-in-chief. And the evidence is now overwhelming to justify the prosecution of the former president.”
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