For months we’ve heard President Trump’s TV lawyers, as he calls them, bandy about the argument that he — or any president, for that matter — couldn’t have obstructed justice because justice is what he says it is.
In other words, that because, they claim, a president possesses absolute power to cut short a criminal investigation, he cannot by definition be guilty of obstructing it. Or, in the famous Nixonian formulation, as Richard M. Nixon told David Frost, “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
.. The precise context involved the president’s discussion with then-FBI Director James B. Comey in which, according to Comey’s testimony, Trump cleared the Oval Office of other witnesses before discussing his just-fired national security adviser, Michael Flynn. According to Comey, Trump expressed his “hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.”
.. The letter disputes Comey’s version of events but says it wouldn’t matter if Trump had made those statements. And then, in a magnificently gaslighting move, the letter claims that Trump is actually the hero of any obstruction story, because he fired Flynn: “Far, far, from obstructing justice, the only individual in the entire Flynn story that ensured swift justice was the President.”
.. the notion that the president could peremptorily call off any prosecution for any reason whatsoever — no matter how corrupt — would be laughable if it weren’t so scary.
Call out his lies. He depends on them.
just calling out deceit is insufficient. It is essential as well to understand why Trump tells particular lies at particular moments and to be hardheaded in judging how effective they are.
.. Republicans on the ballot this fall should be asked if they see Pelosi as an “MS-13 lover,” and if not, whether they will denounce Trump for saying such a thing. I am not holding my breath.
.. Yet sometimes Trump engages in a perverse form of transparency. He signaled clearly that the whole point of his screed — during which he also re-upped his claim that Mexico would pay for his border wall — was about the midterm elections. Immigration, he said, is “a good issue for us, not for them.”
.. Why immigration? It’s not the central concern of most voters. A Gallup survey in May found that 10 percent of Americans listed it as the most important problem facing the country. And Trump’s wall is not popular — in a recent CBS News poll, 59 percent of Americans were against building it.
.. But currently, Trump and the Republicans aren’t focused on the majority of Americans. They are petrified that their own loyalists do not seem very motivated about voting in November... just 26 percent of Americans strongly approved of Trump’s job performance, compared with 41 percent who strongly disapproved... Trump and his party feel they need to screech loudly to get their side back into the game, and attacking immigration (going back to Mexican “rapists”) is the signature Trump talking point... Republican House candidates are following Trump’s lead, according to a USA Today study published Tuesday, “blanketing the airwaves with TV ads embracing a hard line on immigration.” By contrast, health care was the topic most invoked in Democratic spots. The GOP’s emphasis may shift some after the primaries, but Republicans seem to know that wedge issues are more useful to them than their record... Political polarization has many sources, but the prime cause of it now is the president himself. Polarization defines Trump’s survival strategy, and it means that demagoguery —
- toward immigrants,
- toward crime,
- toward special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe,
- toward dissenting NFL players,
- toward anyone who takes him on
— is what his presidency is all about... What thus needs exposing is not simply Trump’s indifference to the truth but also the fact that he depends upon the kinds of lies that will tear our country to pieces.
Neal Katyal: Can’t Indict a President? That Could Hurt Trump
For that reason, the “can’t indict a sitting president” view is necessarily dependent on Congress having all of the information necessary to conduct thorough impeachment proceedings.
.. To say that a prosecutor cannot indict a sitting president is, by definition, to say that the prosecutor’s evidence must be given to Congress so that it may decide whether the president should remain in office. It means, in short, that should Mr. Mueller conclude he cannot indict a sitting president, he would also have to turn over all of the information he has uncovered to Congress.
.. If Mr. Giuliani is correct that Mr. Trump cannot be indicted, then the other idea being floated by Mr. Trump’s lawyers — that such testimony would amount to a “perjury trap” — makes little sense.
.. The president of the United States would be refusing to do what every other federal employee must do — provide evidence in a law enforcement proceeding — even when he faces no imminent criminal consequences.
.. But there is a deeper problem still. Mr. Giuliani appears to be making an argument not just about timing — that a sitting president cannot be indicted while in office — but also about the president’s being immune from the criminal process altogether. That is the basis for his claim that the president can refuse a subpoena, which harks back to the notorious statement of Richard Nixon that “when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
.. Mr. Trump, whose Justice Department has, with his blessing, repeatedly overruled longstanding Justice Department positions at an unheard-of rate, is in no position to complain if Mr. Rosenstein overrules these two old opinions... If indictment is off the table, then impeachment must be on it.. if impeachment is off the table because of nefarious congressional activity, then indictment must be on it.