On Saturday afternoon, Harvard Law professor and constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe told MSNBC’s Alex Witt that there’s a law on the books that prosecutors can use to bring criminal charges against Trump for starting the Jan. 6 insurrection. And it looks like this is a pretty good legal mechanism for permanently banning Trump from ever holding office again.
Watch here, via Raw Story.
Witt and Tribe were discussing the case of Alex Harkrider of Carthage, Texas. According to the local newspaper, The Panola Watchman, Harkrider is charged with bringing several guns, a bulletproof vest, and an axe to Washington, then joining the mob that forced its way into the Capitol. He’s been on house arrest and electronic monitoring since April. In June, Harkrider’s lawyers sought to remove the electronic monitoring requirement. They argued that their client has to pay $110 a month for the monitoring, and claimed it caused him “financial, emotional and physical hardship.”
Prosecutors, not surprisingly, opposed the motion. They not only cited the seriousness of the charges, but also noted Trump’s obstinate insistence that he had a second term stolen from him, as well as Trump’s claims that he could potentially be reinstalled as the rightful president.
Witt couldn’t help but notice this part of the argument. She asked Tribe if the fact that prosecutors have “actually named Trump” and cited his continued peddling of the Big Lie meant Trump could potentially be in legal jeopardy.
Tribe mused that it was a sign that federal prosecutors were “beginning to connect the dots.” He added that if prosecutors were citing Trump’s promotion of the Big Lie was “part of what is fomenting violence even now,” then all the calls for the pro-Trump crowds to prevent Congress from counting the electoral votes could potentially violate a law on rebellion and insurrection dating back to the Civil War era.
That law would be 18 USC 2383, which makes “rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof” or gives “aid and comfort” to said insurrection can face up to 10 years in prison and—drum roll please—“shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”
Tribe summed it up this way:
It’s a law that says anyone who gives aid and comfort to an insurrection against the United States government, whether in words or in action, shall be imprisoned and never again eligible to run for office. And that law, I think, may very well apply to Donald Trump.
Just in case anyone missed it, Tribe took to Twitter to explain it further.
Indeed, he’s wondering why prosecutors aren’t using it already.
It’s hard not to blame Tribe for wondering. After all, this law is, on the face of it, the perfect tool to use against any electeds who took part in this horror. Remember, Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs of Arizona were begging Trump to pardon them. I noted in January that Trump turned them down in part because he knew that the Senate still had the power to all but end his political career. But why would Gosar and Biggs have come begging for pardons in the first place—unless they somehow knew prosecutors could use this rubber truncheon on them.
Tribe is one of the greatest constitutional scholars this country has ever produced. So if he thinks prosecutors could potentially have a way to permanently defang Trump, it’s something worth filing away.