Can the President Be Indicted? A Long-Hidden Legal Memo Says Yes

Could this be what your lack of debate has been reduced to?

Or this:
Trump will be criminally indicted......take it and run with it.

 

Yes, neatly avoiding that your post lacked any substance to debate. So the first meme is the most amusing as it addresses your "profound argument" ... Mueller-phobia, and birtherism? Self deportation, and pardons? Those don't even qualify as allegations. They're distraught dissociative musings, completely unrelated to the thread.

 

The projection is strong when one has been constantly owned. I understand and empathise with you.

 

There is nothing new about legal experts pontificating as to whether a sitting president can be indicted. The So called long hidden memo is just another spin article. That's what the NYT does best, yellow journalism.

Opinions were written during Jaworski's Watergate investigation and during Ken Starr's Clinton investigations. Opinions are like you know.. everyone has one. The fact is no court has ever ruled on the matter or even attempted to challenge what the NYT writes as a breaking news story that Mueller needs to know about. Mueller is not stupid.

Here is the other side of the argument:

Nothing in the Constitution or federal statutes says that sitting presidents are immune from prosecution, and no court has ruled that they have any such shield. But proponents of the theory that Mr. Trump is nevertheless immune for now from indictment cited the Constitution’s “structural principles,” in the words of a memo written in September 1973 by Robert G. Dixon Jr., then the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

This argument boils down to practicalities of governance: The stigma of being indicted and the burden of a trial would unduly interfere with a president’s ability to carry out his duties, preventing the executive branch “from accomplishing its constitutional functions” in a way that cannot “be justified by an overriding need,” Mr. Dixon wrote.

In October 1973, Mr. Nixon’s solicitor general, Robert H. Bork, submitted a court brief that similarly argued for an “inference” that the Constitution makes sitting presidents immune from indictment and trial. And in 2000, Randolph D. Moss, the head of the Office of Legal Counsel under Mr. Clinton, reviewed the Justice Department’s 1973 opinions and reaffirmed their conclusion.

Even if Mr. Mueller were to uncover sufficient evidence to indict Mr. Trump, decide that the legal arguments in the Starr office memo were correct and conclude that he wanted to ask a grand jury for an indictment while Mr. Trump is president — all big ifs — yet another uncertainty would loom: whether he must accept the Office of Legal Counsel’s analysis, even if he disagreed with it.

The Justice Department’s regulations give Mr. Mueller, as a special counsel, greater autonomy than an ordinary prosecutor, but still say he must follow its “rules, regulations, procedures, practices and policies.” They also permit Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein to overrule Mr. Mueller if he tries to take a step that Mr. Rosenstein deems contrary to such practices.

Dream on leftists. Not going to happen

 

2 pages of gibberish about indicting a president for unspecified crimes. Many posters support this indictment, but can't name why. Just name call and call the argument won.

 

Unless he is a democrat, then anything he does is alright.

 

You appear to be focused on something that lacks any relevance.........democrat/republican/birther, no one is above the law in a country of laws.

 

Read the 15 page pdf and run on back.

 

Franklin Pierce was arrested while in office as was U.S. Grant. The first for running over an old woman with his horse and the latter for speeding on horseback. I don't think it took a secret memo from Ken Starr from 20 years ago to reach this conclusion. History already did it for us.

 

Sometimes Trump and his sycophants need to put things into the Clinton context to get their attention.

 

Once again, unless you are a democrat named Clinton. You appear to be bought and paid for.

 

A foolish response was expected but this exceed that. Thanks.

Trump can be indicted while in office then as he is not above the law even as POTUS.

 

Only a Clinton could not be indicted, even with all the evidence we know of so far.

Talk about a foolish response, it is yours.

 

Don't need to. No one has any idea what, or even if, any wrongdoing there is.

 

Keep waiting, the next big breakthrough will be here tomorrow.

Tomorrow never comes.

Prov: When the day arrives that you are now calling "tomorrow," you will call that day "today" and a different day will be called "tomorrow." (Therefore, you should not resolve to do something tomorrow, since that day will never arrive.)

 

If he can be indicted, he can pardon himself.

Collusion is not a crime; conspiracy is. To prove a conspiracy, you need an agreement to commit a specific statutory violation of penal law. Thus far, there is no indication that an actual crime has been committed.

Under the regulations for special-counsel appointments, there is supposed to be cause to believe a crime has been committed before a prosecutor is appointed. Yet, we have a prosecutor assigned to the case even though there is, as yet, no crime. The Justice Department has given this special counsel, Robert Mueller, carte blanche to hunt for a crime, notwithstanding that his jurisdiction is supposed to be circumscribed by the crime(s) that the Justice Department first specifies in appointing him – i.e., the suspected offenses trigger the appointment, the appointment is not supposed to trigger a search for suspected offenses.

The president is in charge of the executive branch. The Justice Department answers to him. All U.S. attorneys are appointed by him and may be dismissed at will by him. It seems inconceivable, then, that a president would authorize his own indictment; he’d more likely dismiss any federal prosecutor who attempted to indict him. That includes any special counsel. As we have observed, there is no such thing as an independent prosecutor in our federal system. The special counsel is beholden to the attorney general (or the deputy attorney general); the attorney general, in turn, is beholden to the president.

The fact that a sitting president could theoretically be indicted does not necessarily mean he would be subjected to trial while in office. Federal criminal law provides numerous public-interest exceptions to the requirement that an indicted defendant be given a speedy trial. To say the least, the high public responsibilities of the presidency would be a very compelling reason to delay a trial.

Still, there is no categorical rule immunizing a president from a criminal trial during his term in office. In Clinton v. Jones (1997), the Supreme Court noted that judicial proceedings routinely place demands on the executive branch in general, and the president in particular. Presidents have been ordered to comply, and have voluntarily complied, with various requests for the production of evidence and testimony in criminal cases. While Clinton v. Jones involved a civil claim based on an allegation of private misconduct by the president, the Court’s reasoning is applicable to criminal allegations: Presidents do not enjoy constitutional immunity from the lawful demands of the judicial process, but trial judges would be expected to respect the demands of the presidency and grant reasonable stays in the proceedings.

Given the practical unlikelihood that a president would allow himself to be indicted, it makes little sense to speculate about what might cause a judge, at some point, to deny further delay and order a criminal trial of a sitting president to proceed.

There need not be a formal criminal charge before a president issues a pardon. After President Nixon resigned, President Ford pardoned him even though he had not been indicted. President Lincoln mass-pardoned Confederate soldiers and sympathizers, and President Carter mass-pardoned Vietnam draft evaders. Thus, the fact that special counsel Mueller has not, and may never, file criminal charges would not prevent President Trump from issuing pardons.

Including … a pardon for himself? Yes.

A pardon is a judicially unreviewable act of executive discretion. The only exceptions to it are obvious from the Constitution’s Pardon Clause (article II, section 2), which limits pardons to “Offenses against the United States.” That is, the president may only pardon offenses that have already occurred – he cannot grant a prospective “get out of jail free” card for future crimes; and the president may not pardon state offenses, for they are outside his jurisdiction over federal law-enforcement.

It is obvious that the Framers understood they were permitting the president to pardon himself. The Pardon Clause says that while the president may pardon any federal offense, this does not extend to “Cases of Impeachment.” The Framers thus expressly considered a president’s potential use of the pardon power to benefit himself. The only limit they imposed on such self-dealing was to prevent the president from blocking his own impeachment, not his own prosecution. If the Framers wanted to prevent a president from blocking his own federal prosecution, just as they took pains to block him from preventing his own impeachment, they would have said so.

So yes, a president may be indicted, and a president may pardon himself. Neither is worth worrying about at this point, since we don’t have a crime.

https://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/...ident-may-be-indicted-and-may-pardon-himself/

 

Keep dreaming the dream. He will be indicted and will not be able to pardon himself. He is not above the law, Russia is waiting for him to apply for sanctuary.

 

No he won't and yes he can!

I find it curious that in a media environment obsessed with the DNC hack, it turns out five individuals were abusing their access to the DNC email system while -- possibly -- committing an assortment of crimes.

* Imran Awan's wife (herself one of the IT 5) already fled to Pakistan, carrying $12,000 in cash with her.

* Imran Awan man himself wired $280,000 to Pakistan, then attempted to flee there.

* Debbie Blabbermouth-Schultz has threatened "consequences" against the Capitol Police unless they return her hard drives before the police are done using them as evidence in a case they're investigating against the IT 5. Almost as if she has something to hide.

* Despite the IT 5 taking all sorts of liberties with the DNC email and passwords while the DNC freaks out about an email hack, and despite them doing shady **** on the side (Imran Awan was arrested for bank fraud), they somehow manage to land a big attorney with deep DNC/Clinton connections.

* The Daily Caller reported that stolen hard drives were recovered from Imran Awan "smashed" by hammers.

* Despite all these goings-on, Debbie Blabbermouth-Schultz actually kept Imran Awan on the payroll for reasons unknown, even as he was subject of a Capitol Hill police probe. She only (finally!) fired him after his arrest, then refused comment.

So: lot of interesting stuff going on here.

The National Laughingstock did file an obligatory the-right-wing-is-making-fun-of-us-for-embargoing this story.

Check out the grabby, juiced-up, must-read, must-RT headline they gave this compelling set of facts:

Washington Post

✔@washingtonpost
Congressional IT staffer charged with home equity loan fraud http://wapo.st/2uy1A2O

1:35 PM - Jul 26, 2017

Congressional IT staffer charged with home equity loan fraud
Imran Awan pleaded not guilty after his arrest at Dulles International Airport

washingtonpost.com

Can you feel your pulse quickening with the thrill of the journalistic hunt?

Can you feel your breath catching in your throat?!

Wow. It's almost as if they want to be able to say "we covered that story" while doing everything possible to bury it.

Almost as if that's what they were attempting, mind you:

Mike Cernovich

✔@Cernovich
This is amazing:

- buried fact it was DWS's IT staffer
- no mention of smashed hard drives
- FBI had to arrest because he was fleeing https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/890309504981774336 …

3:46 PM - Jul 26, 2017

CNN did post an online recap of the story -- pioneering the the innovative Don't Read This Boring Story Which the Right Is Forcing Us to Mention format that the National Laughingstock later imitated:

CNN

✔@CNN
A Democratic staffer has been arrested on bank fraud charge http://cnn.it/2v00Cgr

1:33 PM - Jul 26, 2017

Democratic staffer arrested on bank fraud charge
Imran Awan, who has worked for several House Democrats, including Rep. Debbie Blabbermouth Schultz, was arrested Tuesday on charges of bank fraud as he tried to leave the country, legal documents show.

cnn.com

Gee I wonder if they'd downplay this story to such a laughable degree if it had been Paul Manafort wiring $280,000 to a foreign safe harbor and then attempting to abscond.

The American Electorate sees right through you guys!

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/370871.php