The Mueller Report thread

[Dill]

(04-01-2019, 11:03 AM)GMDino Wrote: Possibly?

But in this specific case the investigation was into the guy who did the firing.  That adds a certain level of uncertainty.

Nixon said "It's not a crime if the President does it."

The DOJ said you couldn't indict a sitting President...but that is not law.  That's opinion. And it has never been tested in the courts.

Some things aren't a crime if the President does it.  E.g., it's automatically a crime if a general, on his own initiative, turns over a top secret bit of classified material to the Russians. It is not automatically so if the president does it--though under the right conditions it could be treason even for the president.

But if there is rule of law, a president cannot simply end FBI or Special Counsel investigations into his own conduct, as can dictators.

Many aspects of the president's relation to law have never been legally addressed because office holders themselves had 1) a good idea of how government works and where the invisible lines between good and bad conduct lay, and 2) were generally capable of separating personal from national issues, whether in the realm of policy or of finances.  It is in the interest of the country that the president have a wide powers of action, especially in foreign policy where the U.S. must often react instantly to a threat. So Congress has generally been deferential, regardless of whose party is in power.  There has since Vietnam been a constant tug of war between the two branches regarding the legality of each other's actions, but almost always within the context of Constitutional interpretation--not regarding what appears to be criminal and self-dealing behavior.

When exceptions like Nixon come along there are challenges--though Nixon is kind of the inverse of Trump regarding "1)" in that he knew very well how government worked and where the boundaries were.  

Now we are living through a time in which Trump's testing/public violation of norms of presidential behavior are calling forth ever strong Congressional responses.