Politico: "Pelosi rebuffs Nadler on impeachment after Mueller flop"

[Nuggets]

21. And then there's this:

Yes, You Can Indict the President

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/opinion/indict-president-trial.html


One of the perplexing questions of constitutional law is what to do about a sitting president who is suspected of having committed a crime. This much is clear: A sitting president should not be required to submit to a criminal trial, an undertaking that would be incompatible with the duties of the nation’s chief executive.

That should not, however, preclude a grand jury from indicting a president when the facts and the law warrant, even if the trial itself has to be postponed until he or she is no longer in office.

An indictment in this context serves a critically important purpose: Without it, the usual five-year statute of limitations for most federal crimes would elapse, forever precluding a president from being held accountable for potentially serious crimes. Thus, a president should be indictable unless he agrees to waive any future defense that the statute of limitations expired during the president’s term.

There is nothing in the constitutional text or judicial precedent that provides for a categorical bar to the indictment of a sitting president. The closest the Supreme Court has come to addressing the question was in Clinton v. Jones in 1997, in which the issue was whether a president could delay until the end of his term a civil suit by a private individual. I argued Clinton v. Jones for the United States, urging the court to hold that a civil trial would unduly impair a president’s ability to carry out his duties. The court unanimously rejected that position.
In Clinton v. Jones the entire court agreed that the fact that a federal court’s exercising of its constitutional power to hear a case “may significantly burden the time and attention of the chief executive is not sufficient to establish a violation of the Constitution.” Mere indictment of a president would not meet the stringent standard in Clinton v. Jones for presidential immunity from ordinary legal processes.

An indictment would, of course, place a cloud over a presidency, even if all further proceedings were postponed. But in many such instances there will already be a cloud over the Oval Office. And a president has a uniquely powerful platform for publicly responding to charges.

No one should be above the law. Barring indictment could even provide a powerful incentive for presidents to seek a second term to insure that the time for all possible criminal charges elapsed while they were in office.

>snip<

Whether indicting a sitting president would facilitate or inhibit the pursuit of justice is a question calling not just for logic but for wisdom and judgment as well. The exercise of that judgment, however, should not be inhibited by an assumption that indictment is categorically barred by the Constitution.

In any event, before a prosecutor declines to indict a president, he should seek an agreement that the president will not subsequently seek to bar prosecution based on deadlines that expired while he was in office. The White House should not be a sanctuary from justice.




——-Walter Dellinger was an assistant attorney general and the head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice from 1993 to 1996 and was acting solicitor general from 1996 to 1997.