Harvard law professor: Trump’s challenges to election results ‘dangerous,’ and ‘going to fail’

Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus of constitutional law at Harvard, said Sunday that President Trump’s challenges to the outcome of the election are “dangerous” and are “going to fail.”

“The Republicans themselves know that President Trump’s claims that [President-elect Joe] Biden’s votes were fraudulent are without merit, because if those claims were true, then those Republicans too would have been elected fraudulently or mistakenly because they were the same ballots,” Tribe said on “Fox News Sunday,” referencing Republicans outperforming expectations in House and Senate races.

“If we know that Trump is going to lose in the courts, and we do, why should we care? The reason is that he is undermining democracy because there are millions of people who will believe him even though there is nothing in his arguments and no evidence to back them,” he added.

Former independent counsel Ken Starr countered, saying during an appearance on the same show that settling any legal challenges is “a very important process.”

“Our system is designed to check, let’s check it out, a lawsuit was filed just on Wednesday, let’s let this process run,” Starr said.

“Everyone has heard, if his or her ears are open, anecdotal evidence, not proof, that people who should not have received those ballots received them,” he added.

Tribe then noted that when the anecdotal cases Starr referenced had been tested in court, “every one of them has been shown empty or been withdrawn.”

“There are cases all over the country of people saying ‘whoops, I made a mistake,’” he added. “The Trump legal team is about 1 for 19.”

Starr and Tribe also addressed the possibility of Republican state legislatures appointing pro-Trump electors in states Biden won. Leaders of several GOP state majorities have said they would not take this step, which Starr conceded was “more of a theoretical possibility.”

“They are not going to risk their own political futures by trying to override the overwhelming views of their own constituents, and besides the state legislature is itself a creature of state law,” Tribe said, noting that states such as Pennsylvania have Democratic governors who would veto the appointment of Republican electors.