Because he has unfettered authority
Trump’s lawyers are seriously arguing, in a long memo to Mueller, that Trump can’t obstruct justice because as president he is justice himself.
President Trump’s lawyers have for months quietly waged a campaign to keep the special counsel from trying to force him to answer questions in the investigation into whether he obstructed justice, asserting that he cannot be compelled to testify and arguing in a confidential letter that he could not possibly have committed obstruction because he has unfettered authority over all federal investigations.
Including federal investigations into his own crimes. So a president can do anything at all and then simply shut down or forbid all federal investigations because his authority is that absolute.
So they’re saying presidents are dictators.
In a brash assertion of presidential power, the 20-page letter — sent to the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and obtained by The New York Times — contends that the president cannot illegally obstruct any aspect of the investigation into Russia’s election meddling because the Constitution empowers him to, “if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon.”
[Read the Trump lawyers’ confidential memo to Mr. Mueller here.]
Other lawyers don’t agree.
Trump is saying he can put an end to any criminal investigation he & he can pardon anyone he wants to. In other words, he can insulate himself & his family if a jury votes to convict them. No other President has successfully set himself above the reach of the law until now. https://t.co/YN3r7Rc2Xn
— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) June 2, 2018
The President’s legal arguments would render whole sections of the Constitution moot, and allow a president to engage in any form of criminality and obstruct an investigation into his own wrongdoing. Nobody is above the law. Not this President. Not any president. https://t.co/DKpZizrpKl
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) June 2, 2018
This would be a valid legal argument — if our government were a dictatorship. Fortunately, we are a government of laws, not men. And in America, no one is above the law, including the president. https://t.co/yxtu9HUUkz
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) June 2, 2018
(I don’t know that Schumer is a lawyer. Whatever.)
The attempt to dissuade Mr. Mueller from seeking a grand jury subpoena is one of two fronts on which Mr. Trump’s lawyers are fighting. In recent weeks, they have also begun a public-relations campaign to discredit the investigation and in part to pre-empt a potentially damaging special counsel report that could prompt impeachment proceedings.
They have begun a public-relations campaign to discredit the investigation and the FBI and the Justice Department, all in the effort to shield the guy who is supposed to be working for the good of the country as a whole (and its people), not for himself.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers are gambling that Mr. Mueller may not want to risk an attempt to forge new legal ground by bringing a grand jury subpoena against a sitting president into a criminal proceeding.
“Ensuring that the office remains sacred and above the fray of shifting political winds and gamesmanship is of critical importance,” they wrote.
How can the office remain “sacred” when it’s occupied by that dreadful vulgar monster? He cheapens it with every word, every look, every gesture, every action, every photo op, and god knows every tweet.
“The president’s prime function as the chief executive ought not be hampered by requests for interview,” they wrote. “Having him testify demeans the office of the president before the world.”
That ship has sailed. That ship has made multiple circumnavigations of the globe; Trump himself demeans the office constantly. Having him testify would do a little bit to repair the damage he’s done by showing he’s not free to commit crimes and then laugh in our faces.
They also contended that nothing Mr. Trump did violated obstruction-of-justice statutes, making both a technical parsing of what one such law covers and a broad constitutional argument that Congress cannot infringe on how he exercises his power to supervise the executive branch. Because of the authority the Constitution gives him, it is impossible for him to obstruct justice by shutting down a case or firing a subordinate, no matter his motivation, they said.
If they’re right about it then this is a dictatorship. They’d better not be right.
Rather like Louis XIV, in the 21st century–the ‘Sun President’. It’s one of the problems of electing a quasi monarch, it’s so difficult to fire the deadheads and crooks. Thst’s one of the reasons most democracies use the Westminster parliamentary system, the PM is just ‘first amongst equals’.
Nixon thought he was above the law, too.
“Ensuring that the office remains sacred and above the fray of shifting political winds and gamesmanship is of critical importance,” they wrote.
Ensuring that the American presidency remains (?) unpolitical? Did I miss something?
iknklast @2
He certainly did. I can remember the very long and tortuous process to get rid of him, it was puzzling to citizens of parliamentary systems. However, as far as I understand Nixon had some very significant foreign policy successes, the exit from Vietnam and the opening up of relations with China. Trump lurches from one foreign policy disaster to another.
This is kinda like his “the prezident can’t have a conflict of interest” argument. It doesn’t help that none of the founders ever anticipated someone as sleazy and corrupt as Angry Cheeto would ever hold the office. This clearly demonstrates the limits of relying on honour, precedent, and commonly accepted norms to do the work of some clearly written guidelines.
Clearly written guidelines still need the will to enforce them and the sense to interpret them in a relevant fashion. The will would have to come from Congress. The interpretive hijinks Republicans are willing to embrace are on display right here, and in SCOTUS opinions from Scalia, Thomas, and Gorsuch particularly in recent years.
There isn’t an alternative to reliance on honor, precedent, and commonly accepted norms. You’ve either got them front and center or you’ve got them operating between and behind all the fancy constitution-mongering. Westminster systems aren’t any different that way – they just tend to make the reliance on norms clearer and even more extreme since the formal power is so concentrated and unbounded.
I’m not saying that we couldn’t use a whole lot of Constitutional and formal reform in the U.S. We could. Badly. But beyond that, we’ve got too many people too willing to throw out our common commitment to the rule of law and of functioning politics – politics that takes serious differences as input and renders broadly acceptable solutions as output – in favor of short-term, partisan and personal advantage. They’ll find a way to do more damage than we can accept with any formal arrangements, so long as they are this willing to wreck stuff to get what they want and possess the numbers of voters and dollars they have.
Jeff Engel @6
I’d agree with your first sentence, it applies to both presidential and Westminster systems. In the final analysis, constitutions don’t guarantee anything without the goodwill of politicians and the vigilance of the voters.The difference with the Westminster system is that the voters elect a parliament, not a prime minister.