Democrats in the House of Representatives continue to be sharply divided on whether or not they should pursue impeachment of President Donald Trump. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi remains adamantly opposed to impeachment, while lawmakers ranging from Rep. Maxine Waters to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are very much in favor of it. And President Trump, according the Washington Post, is claiming that he will “sue” Democrats if they pursue impeachment.
In the Post, Ashley Parker reports that Trump says he will turn to the U.S. Supreme Court if Democrats try to impeach him — and in addition to that, he has privately told aides and advisers he will “sue” them. Parker’s report is based on conservations with around 15 Trump associates, who range from White House aides to outside advisers. Trump has also publicly threatened a lawsuit against Democrats, and according to Parker, he makes that threat often in private conservations.
Some legal scholars, Parker notes, are asserting that the idea of a U.S. president suing Congress for trying to impeach him is ludicrous. Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, denounced Trump’s threat as “idiocy” on Twitter and posted, “Not even a SCOTUS filled with Trump appointees would get in the way of the House or Senate.”
However, attorney and Trump supporter Alan Dershowitz (who is also a Harvard Law School professor) has asserted that should Democrats pursue impeachment, the U.S. Supreme Court could intervene if the justices believed that Congress hadn’t acted constitutionally.
Whether Democrats in the House will or won’t pursue impeachment remains to be seen. Pelosi hasn’t budged on impeachment, maintaining that impeaching Trump in the House would only benefit him politically — and that even if Trump were impeached in the House, he would never be convicted by the Senate’s Republican majority.
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