Skip to contentImpeachment Symposium July 2026 Agenda and Bios
Agenda
11:00 am – 11:15 AM: Opening Remarks by Ralph Nader Consumer advocate, lawyer, and author
Topic: Why Impeachment?
11:15 am – 12:30 PM: Remote Presentations
Moderator: Theresa Amato Principal, Amato PLLC
Speaker: Professor Erwin Chemerinsky Dean, UC Berkeley Law School
Topic: What can States and Law Professors do to Constrain Constitutional Wrongdoing?
Speaker: Professor Richard Painter, Chief White House ethics lawyer under George W. Bush
Topic: The Presidential Extortion of Corporations, Law Firms, Universities and the Media
Speaker: Mark Green Former New York City Public Advocate
Topic: Rule-Of-Law or Law-Of-Rule?
Speaker: Jessica Denson, Founder, The Removal Coalition
Topic: The Grassroots Movement to Push Congress to Pursue Impeachment
12:30 PM – 1:00 PM: Remarks by Members of Congress
Speaker: Congressman Steve Cohen, Democrat representing Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District
Topic: House Resolution 1155
Speaker: Congressman Shri Thanedar, Democrat representing Michigan’s 13th Congressional District
Topic: House Resolution 353
1:00 PM – 2:30 PM: Expert Presentations
Speaker: Celinda Lake, President, Lake Research Partners
Topic: Public Support for Impeachment
Speaker: Michael J. Gerhardt, Eminent scholar on Impeachment and the Constitution
Topic: History of the Impeachment Clause and Trump’s Unique Danger
Speaker: Suparna Reddy, Senior Counsel, Free Speech For People
Topic: FSFP’s Impeachment Campaign and Trump’s Assault on Free Expression
Speaker: Joan Claybrook, Former President of Public Citizen and Head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
Topic: Trump’s Undermining of the Department of Transportation and NHTSA resulting in Rampant Injuries and Deaths
Speaker: William D. Hartung, Former Senior Research Fellow, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
Topic: Trump’s Catastrophic Failure to Superintend the Department of Defense
Speaker: Keira Havens, Executive Director, Citizen’s Impeachment
Topic: New Activism on Impeachment
Speaker: Bruce Fein, Constitutional Lawyer and Scholar
Topic: Trump’s Criminal Wars of Aggression, Murder, Piracy and Kidnapping
2:30 PM – 2:50 PM: Final Remote Presentations
Speaker: Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute specializing in foreign policy and civil liberties
Topic: Confronting Today’s Warpower Crisis: Americans Must Reasset Democratic Control
Speaker: Major General Dennis Laich, Director of Eisenhower Media Network, U.S. Army, (Ret.) & USA Reserve
Topic: How the Military Would Respond to Impeachment
2:50 – 3:00 PM: Open Q&A
Speaker Biographies
Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author.
Throughout his career, he founded many organizations including Public Citizen, the Center for Study of Responsive Law, the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), the Center for Auto Safety, Public Citizen, Clean Water Action Project, the Disability Rights Center, and the Pension Rights Center.
Mr. Nader has long advocated for Congress to reassert itself vis-a-vis the Executive using the constitutional means at its disposal, including impeachment.
Congressman Steve Cohen
Representative Steve Cohen has served as the U.S. Representative for Tennessee’s 9th congressional district, centered in Memphis, since 2007. Born on May 24, 1949, in Memphis, Cohen overcame childhood polio before embarking on a career in public service. He earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Memphis School of Law in 1973. Prior to entering federal politics, he built a foundational career in state governance, serving as a Shelby County Commissioner and spending 24 years as a member of the Tennessee State Senate, where he became known for championing civil rights and government transparency.
As a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee and former Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, Cohen has been a champion of accountability for the federal government. In November 2017, following Donald Trump’s notorious, equivocating response to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Cohen became the first Member of Congress to file comprehensive articles of impeachment against Trump. Over the course of Trump’s presidency, Cohen remained at the forefront of the movement, voting to impeach him a total of four times—twice within the Judiciary Committee and twice on the House floor.
Cohen has extended his focus on impeachment beyond the executive branch to target perceived corruption within the nation’s highest court. He introduced six articles of impeachment against Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, accusing him of allowing the judiciary to become a partisan weapon. Cohen’s resolution cited rulings that facilitated partisan gerrymandering and granted broad presidential immunity, while additionally alleging that Roberts breached ethics regulations by failing to disclose assets and refusing to recuse himself from cases involving firms that paid his wife millions in recruiting fees. This aggressive strategy underscores how Cohen has utilized constitutional impeachment tools as a defining element of his legislative career and public legacy.
Congressman Cohen is a principal co-sponsor of House Resolution 1155.
Congressman Shri Thanedar
Representative Shri Thanedar is a Democratic U.S. Congressman who has represented Michigan’s 13th Congressional District since 2023. Born in India, he overcame poverty to build a successful career as a chemist and entrepreneur before entering public service by serving in the Michigan House of Representatives before entering Congress in 2023.
In recent years, Congressman Thanedar’s focus has been on the rampant unconstitutional abuses of the executive branch. On April 28, 2025, he introduced House Resolution 353, containing seven comprehensive articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. Citing what he described as a “sweeping abuse of power” and acts of tyranny, Thanedar targeted actions like unconstitutional agency funding cuts via the Department of Government Efficiency, unlawful deportations, and the violation of First Amendment rights.
Thanedar has also introduced articles of impeachment against some of the most notorious members of the Trump cabinet. In December 2025, he introduced House Resolution 935 to impeach Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, on charges of murder and the reckless mishandling of classified information following an unauthorized leak of military operations. In March 2026, he filed articles of impeachment against Attorney General Pam Bondi, accusing her of obstruction of Congress and dereliction of duty regarding the withholding of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Congressman Thanedar continues to be one of the leading proponents of impeachment in the House of Representatives.
Theresa Amato
Theresa Amato, principal of Amato PLLC, is a lawyer who provides legal and consulting services to nonprofits and foundations, as well as political candidates, parties, and committees. She has served as the executive director or general counsel or in-house counsel for various organizations.
A graduate of Harvard College, with honors in government and economics, Ms. Amato attended NYU University School of Law as a Root-Tilden Scholar and clerked for The Honorable Robert W. Sweet in the Southern District of New York. She has been a Fellow at the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a Wasserstein Public Interest Law Fellow at Harvard Law School.
Ms. Amato is the first woman in U.S. history to manage two high-profile presidential campaigns (Nader 2000/Nader 2004) outside of the two major parties, and is the author of several publications, including Grand Illusion, The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny (The New Press, NY).
Professor Erwin Chemerinsky
Professor Erwin Chemerinsky is the Dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where he also serves as the Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law. Prior to assuming this position, he held numerous prestigious law professor posts including at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, Duke University and the University of Southern California Law School.
Professor Chemerinsky is the author of twenty-two books, including leading casebooks and treatises about constitutional law, criminal procedure, and federal jurisdiction, as well as 200 law review articles. He is a contributing writer for the Opinion section of the Los Angeles Times, and writes regular columns for the Sacramento Bee, the ABA Journal and the Daily Journal, as well as frequent op-eds in newspapers across the country. He frequently argues appellate cases, including in the United States Supreme Court.
Professor Richard Painter
Professor Richard Painter is the S. Walter Richey Professor of Corporate Law at the University of Minnesota Law School, a post he has held for nearly 20 years.Prior to that he served as the chief ethics lawyer for the president, White House employees, and senior nominees to Senate-confirmed positions in the executive branch during the George W. Bush administration.
Painter is the author or co-author of multiple books on ethics, including Getting the Government America Deserves: How Ethics Reform Can Make a Difference. He has also written op-eds on government ethics for various publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times and is the coauthor of two casebooks: Securities Litigation and Enforcement and Professional and Personal Responsibilities of the Lawyer.
Mark Green
Mark Green is a best-selling author and lawyer. One of the original “Nader’s Raiders,” Green helped sue the Nixon administration over the firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, a critical turning point in the Watergate saga. Green later ran the Congress Watch division of Public Citizen, and served as New York City Consumer Affairs Commissioner from 1990 to 1993 and the first ever New York City Public Advocate from 1994 to 2002.
He is the author of the seminal work Who Runs Congress? as well as Fake President – Decoding Trump’s Gaslighting, Corruption, and General Bullsh*t, and was president of Air America. Green can be found on his Substack, titled The Inflection Zone.
Jessica Denson
Jessica Denson is the founder of the Removal Coalition, a grassroots movement empowering activists to be explicit about demanding impeachment and removal of the illegal Trump administration. As one of the earliest Trump whistleblowers, her years of legal activism led to the invalidation of all 2016 Trump campaign NDAs. Over the past year and a half she has mass-mobilized tens of thousands to Washington to pressure Congress to impeach and remove Trump from office, including spearheading the Remove the Regime protests, and most recently organizing the civil disobedience action of active duty Air Force Major Jason Watson.
Celinda Lake
Celinda Lake is one of the Democratic Party’s leading political strategists. She was one of two lead pollsters for the Biden campaign in 2020 and continues to serve as a pollster to the Democratic National Committee (DNC), other national party committees, and dozens of Democratic incumbents and challengers at all levels of the electoral process. Celinda and her firm, Lake Research Partners, are known for cutting-edge research on issues including the economy, health care, the environment, and education, and have worked for a number of institutions including the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Democratic Attorneys General Association (DAGA), AFL-CIO, SEIU, CWA, IAFF, NRDC, ecoAmerica, NARAL, Human Rights Campaign, Planned Parenthood, The Next Generation, EMILY’s List, VoteVets Action Fund, and the Kaiser Family Foundation. Her international work has included work in Liberia, Belarus, Ukraine, South Africa, and Central America.
Her interviews and statistics have been quoted in the Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal, as well as a variety of magazines, including Newsweek, Glamour, and Marie Claire. Celinda has also appeared on numerous television and radio news programs to discuss her work and provide expert commentary, including CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, Fox News, and NPR.
Professor Michael J. Gerhardt
Michael Gerhardt serves as the Burton Craige Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law. His teaching and research focuses on constitutional conflicts between presidents and Congress.
Gerhardt’s extensive public service has included his testifying more than 20 times before Congress, including as the only joint witness in the Clinton impeachment proceedings in the House; speaking behind closed doors to the entire House of Representatives about the history of impeachment in 1998; serving as special counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee for eight of the nine sitting Supreme Court justices; as one of four constitutional scholars called by the House Judiciary Committee during President Trump’s impeachment proceedings, and serving as one of the only two legal scholars testifying in four different presidential impeachment proceedings. During the Clinton and first Trump impeachment proceedings, Gerhardt served as an impeachment expert for CNN. In the second impeachment trial of President Trump, he served as special counsel to the Presiding Officer, Senator Patrick Leahy.
Gerhardt is the author of nine books, including Lincoln’s Mentors (Harper Collins, 2021), and leading treatises on impeachment, appointments, presidential power, Supreme Court precedent, and separation of powers. He has written more than a hundred law review articles and dozens of op-eds in the nation’s leading news publications.
Suparna Reddy
Suparna Reddy serves as Senior Counsel at Free Speech For People.
Prior to joining the staff of Free Speech For People, she served as a Supervising Attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, where she defended over 200 low income tenants in eviction and money damages cases and led one of Legal Aid’s rare affirmative fair housing cases. Before Legal Aid, Ms. Reddy served as legislative counsel in the U.S. Congress for members of both chambers. She has also worked as an antitrust lawyer at a large law firm in DC.
Before graduating from law school, Ms. Reddy interned at the U.S. Department of Labor and Canadian Parliament. She also worked on economic development in Cleveland, Ohio and Hyderabad, India.
Ms. Reddy received her J.D. from Columbia Law School. She received her B.A. in political science and economics from The Ohio State University.
Joan Claybrook
Joan Claybrook was president of Public Citizen from 1982 to January 2009. During that time she oversaw many successful advocacy campaigns, including playing a key role in persuading Congress to mandate air bags, as well as pushing measures to improve fuel economy and truck safety.
Prior to becoming president of Public Citizen, Ms. Claybrook was head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the Carter administration from 1977 to 1981. Before serving as NHTSA administrator, Ms. Claybrook founded and ran Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division and worked for the Public Interest Research Group, the National Traffic Safety Bureau, the Social Security Administration, and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.
William D. Hartung
From 2022 to 2026, William D. Hartung was a Senior Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, where he focused on the arms industry and US military budget. He was previously the director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy and the co-director of the Center’s Sustainable Defense Task Force. Bill is the co-author of The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home. He is also the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex (Nation Books, 2011) and the co-editor, with Miriam Pemberton, of Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War (Paradigm Press, 2008). And Weapons for All (HarperCollins, 1995) is a critique of US arms sales policies from the Nixon through Clinton administrations.
Bill previously directed programs at the New America Foundation and the World Policy Institute. He also worked as a speechwriter and policy analyst for New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams. Hartung’s articles on security issues have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and the World Policy Journal.
Keira Havens
Keira Havens took the same oath Congress did: to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. It has compelled her to take action: first by organizing Citizens’ Impeachment, a grassroots movement to lobby Congress for the impeachment, conviction, and removal of Donald Trump and his enablers, and then organizing more than 150 pro-impeachment candidates to replace a stagnant Congress as the co-founder of Courage for Democracy. The Courage Candidates are aligned on a pro-democracy platform that includes anti-corruption, anti-oligarchy, and anti-authoritarian positions, including the abolition of ICE. A full list of 2026 Courage Candidates is available at couragefordemocracy.com/candidates.
Bruce Fein
Bruce Fein is a Constitutional Lawyer and scholar, having served as Assistant Deputy Attorney General and general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission under President Reagan.
As an expert in constitutional law, Mr. Fein believes it is essential that President Trump be held to account for his unconstitutional actions. He has actively participated in every impeachment inquiry going back to Watergate.
Mr. Fein is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy and American Empire: Before the Fall. He has testified before Congress as an expert witness over 200 times.
Doug Bandow
Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, specializing in foreign policy and civil liberties.
Mr. Bandow formerly worked as Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan and is the former editor of the political magazine Inquiry. He is also the author and editor of numerous books, including Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire, The Politics of Plunder: Misgovernment in Washington, and Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics.
Maj. Gen. Dennis Laich
Maj. Gen. (ret.) Dennis Laich, Director of Eisenhower Media Network, had a distinguished 35-year career in the Army Reserve.
The last 14 of those years were spent in various command positions; most recently as commander of the 94th Regional Readiness Command in Ft. Devens, MA. His business career began in 1972 with Corning Glass Works and included positions with LTV Steel and Navistar International.
Laich holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from Lafayette College, and Master’s degrees from West Virginia University and St. Francis College in business administration and labor relations. He completed post-graduate studies at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and is a graduate of the Army War College. Laich is currently serving as Ohio Dominican University’s PATRIOTS Program director. Laich is the University’s support liaison for veterans applying for the PATRIOTS Program, providing one-on-one assistance and linking them with resources they need.