President Donald Trump attacked reporters Wednesday for asking if he’s concerned about being indicted once he leaves office. The reporters had good reasons for asking the questions if Trump had listened carefully to Robert Mueller’s comments on the topic.
In the first hearing about obstruction of justice, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) brought up examples of obstruction of justice.
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“I’d like to ask you, the reason again, that you did not indict Donald Trump is because of OLC opinion [stating] that you cannot indict a sitting president?” Lieu asked.
In the second portion of the hearings, Mueller clarified his statement, saying it wasn’t that he “didn’t” but that he “couldn’t.” Saying “didn’t” implies he wanted to. Where, saying “couldn’t,” is the more accurate take. As Mueller explained, over and over again, the OLC opinion prevents indictments of a sitting president.
When Mueller was asked again about whether Trump could be indicted after he leaves office, he said yes.
That is not to say Mueller will indict Trump, wants to indict Trump or anticipates anyone indicting Trump. Mueller is simply saying that looking at the OLC opinion, Trump cannot be indicted as president. After he is no longer president, he can be indicted, as the OLC opinion no longer applies.
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Trump’s idea that he is in the clear is incorrect. Unless he wins the 2020 election, a prosecutor can indict. There was at least one question about that, because the statute of limitations would be up before Trump is out of office if he is elected to a second term. That would, in a sense, mean that the president is above the law, which flies in the face of the Constitution.
Here’s Rep. Mike Quigley asking that question below:
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I don’t often talk about how mad I am. I don’t often talk about how mad I am, because talking often about how mad I am prevents me from speaking clearly and rationally. I want to speak clearly and rationally. There is so much need for speaking clearly and rationally amid the endless streams of waste and filth polluting our public discourse.
But I can’t speak clearly and rationally at the expense of morality. Morality often begins with a feeling. The Gospels tell us of Jesus looking on the poor—he could hear and smell their misery—and he was “moved with pity.” But another way of putting it, another way of translating ?????????????, is that the rabbi felt compassion “in his guts.
Once again, the United States is experiencing the profound drama of Presidential impeachment proceedings. But, dissimilar from the past, this time the implications for the rest of the world could be large.
Consider the two modern predecessors to today’s impeachment inquiry into President Donald J. Trump’s attempt to persuade Ukraine’s government to begin a criminal investigation of one of his leading Democratic challengers, former Vice President Joe Biden and Biden’s son Hunter.
The first was the slow-brewing crisis that began with a midnight break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s offices at the Watergate Hotel in Washington in 1972. This impeachment went on for two years and consumed the American political system. It finally ended in President Richard Nixon’s resignation in August 1974. The second was the special counsel investigation of President William J. Clinton, who was impeached in the U.S. House of Representatives but acquitted by the Senate in 1999.
Cynicism is to democratic politics what rust is to motor vehicles. Both are corrosive if left unchecked. Rust will destroy a vehicle, and cynicism, if it becomes endemic, will ultimately destroy democracy.