Witness tampering
Trump is in fact engaged in witness tampering, on Twitter.
It’s this one:
Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Counsel.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2017
I was shocked by how inappropriate that is from a president talking about a Senate hearing, but it took a lawyer friend to point out that it’s witness tampering.
Some observers are reporting it that way.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) is asking whether Donald Trump committed a federal crime by engaging in witness intimidation with a tweet about Sally Yates. If Trump was convicted of witness intimidation, he could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.
It seems pretty ludicrous to deny that that tweet is intimidating, and it does of course name a witness. It doesn’t get much more intimidating than a mentally unstable and vindictive head of state openly threatening you.
Did @POTUS violate 18 USC 1512, which prevents "intimidation" of a witness to "influence" testimony in "official proceeding"? #SallyYates https://t.co/VnxLzmTQzt
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) May 8, 2017
Replies to that tweet note that the tampering one also appears on the official POTUS account, which he apparently can’t delete.
The question that Rep. Lieu raised was an interesting one. Is a tweet from the President Of The United States before a witness testifies before Congress potential witness tampering?
A judge would have to answer that question, but Trump is clearly using his social media presence to shape witness testimony. If this is a case of witness tampering, Trump’s tweets could land him in serious legal trouble.
Is that the kind of crime that law enforcement can just ignore because Republicans control everything? Could Trump murder and devour people on camera and not be prosecuted?
“Could Trump murder and devour people on camera and not be prosecuted?”
In short, yes.
Because America is dead.
If he doesn’t die of old age beforehand, I expect a self-pardon before the end of his tenure.
Just when you thought that monster couldn’t get any worse he clears the bar yet again… not holding my breath on any prosecution though. How many impeachable offenses is he at now?
But impeachment is one thing and prosecution is another. I’m not clear on this, but I hope it’s not the case that no matter what crime he commits, he can’t be prosecuted unless he’s impeached first. But maybe that is exactly the case.
I remember during the Clinton administration, they tried to make the argument that a civilian (Paula Jones) couldn’t sue a sitting president because of classified information or some such thing. The courts didn’t accept that; the Republicans went out of their way to ensure that the way was cleared for her to sue the president (which I understood at the time was unprecedented, but I may be misremembering after 20 years).
Now that insistence (which I think is actually good policy) may come back to haunt them with a Republican president, miring the party in scandal again.
If so, I’m making popcorn and sitting back for the show.
You make the popcorn, I’ll make the voodoo doll and pinata.
Of course for the voodoo doll to work, I believe I need a personal item from the individual in question, and I’m thinking a Trump branded item would not be personal enough.
Ew.
As I understand it (and I’m going off of recollection plus a quick search), the state of the law is this:
A president is immune from personal civil liability for acts performed in his official capacity. In other words, you can’t seek damages from Trump personally because you were injured by some executive order he signed. (Note that presidents can and do get sued in civil actions in their official capacities all the time — I believe Trump is a named defendant in the various travel ban cases.)
A president can be sued in federal court for civil actions for acts not in his official capacity. That was decided in the Paula Jones case. Of course, it wouldn’t shock me if the Supreme Court revisited that issue — one of the arguments the Court rejected in the Jones case was the claim that it wouldn’t necessarily be disruptive to the presidency to have the president sit for deposition, etc…. and that doesn’t seem so clear in retrospect.
Whether a president can be sued in state court for civil actions is an open question, and one that courts are probably going to have to grapple with in some of the lawsuits now pending against Trump.
Whether a president can be criminally prosecuted (by either state or federal authorities) while still in office is also an open question. It was briefed in the famous Nixon tapes case, but the Supreme Court decided it did not need to reach that issue to resolve the case before it. I haven’t delved into it, but my superficial reading is that there are plausible arguments on both sides and it would be hard to predict how the Supreme Court would rule.
The allegation here is a criminal allegation, namely a breach of 18 USC 1512 that covers witness tampering. I’m not an attorney, but it seems to me that a court would have to find beyond reasonable doubt that Trump intended to intimidate, threaten, or corruptly persuade Yates to withhold or alter her testimony. As much as I’d like to see it happen, it’s just not realistic based on that tweet.
There is already Ford’s retrospective pardon for Nixon, including any crimes he may have committed at the federal level, which effectively quashed any criminal prosecution that might have targeted any violation of federal law that Nixon had undertaken. Note that although Tricky Dick had the minimal good grace to have his successor do this, there is nothing in the Constitution of the United States of America which precluded Nixon from pardoning himself.
There is absolutely nothing restraining Trump from doing so, especially if it ever does look like the wolves are at the gate. This would very likely precipitate a constitutional crisis, but we’ve already got at least one of those on the go at the moment with the Electoral College and the legitimacy of the very election in view of Comey’s antics and Russia’s interference.
The man will pardon himself from anything he did, and maybe from anything he might do in the future, in order to avoid being “persecuted” by the Fake News and the biased judges, and his fans will lap it up and beg for more. And the Republic will continue to burn.
Seth,
Speaking of constitutional crisis: remember that charming moment in one of the debates, when Trump said he would “keep us in suspense” about whether or not he would accept an election loss? It was bad enough to have a presidential candidate say that — imagine an incumbent president who refuses to accept the election results because, you know, fake news, and some brown people voted, etc.
Oh, but don’t worry, Congress is in charge of certifying the Electoral College results, and we can surely trust the Republicans in Congress to put the country ahead of their party.
Screechy Monkey, was Trumps charming moment before or after the time he said that he would absolutely accept the election result…….as long as he was the winner?
Acolyte,
As I recall, it was before. The sequence went: Trump gives the “keep you in suspense” bit at the debate, it dominates the headlines the next day, then Trump teases a big announcement at his next rally that he WILL accept the election results “…. as long as I’m the winner!” And then gives his shit-eating grin for his worshipful crowd of idiots.
But then I think the news media moved to talk about, y’know, email server management issues.
If I were to open a Twitter account as Donald J Trermp, or as Donald J Tromp, Donald J Clomp, Donald J Kerrlumph, or something similar, in the confusion I could possibly pardon myself for any federal crimes I might commit while on US territory.
Maybe worth a try?
A further possibility springs to mind. I could SELL pardons to all and sundry, even in advance of the commission of crime.
Come to think of it, there is outstanding precedent for this. The Medieval Catholic Church used to sell indulgences, whereby suckers who bought them (ie everyone) could get time off their stretches in Purgatory. And Purgatory is what the US will become under this clown’s presidency. For sure.