WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court could soon be asked to decide whether the United States has an Imperial Presidency or whether the American President is subject to laws of the land.
With the FBI probe into the Trump campaign’s purported collusion with Russia to manipulate the 2016 Presidential election zeroing in on the White House incumbent, the President and his supporters are making the argument that any efforts by the FBI Special Counsel Robert
Mueller to subpoena Trump would interfere with Presidential prerogatives and duties.
Effectively, such an argument would place the President above the law.
President Trump himself endorsed this line of thinking after Mueller reportedly told Trump’s lawyers, who argued that the President had no obligation to talk to federal investigators, that he could ask a grand jury to subpoena Trump to compel him to testify under oath.
Mueller also revealed to Trump lawyers his line of questioning that included asking the President the reason and circumstances surrounding his firing of FBI Director James Comey. Such a line of inquiry could open the President to obstruction of justice charges because he implicated himself by saying he fired Comey over 'this Russia thing.'
But in a flurry of tweets on Wednesday morning, Trump, sounding alarmed, challenged Mueller’s line of inquiry and its legitimacy by invoking the 'imperial Presidency' arguments made by some lawyers and constitutional experts. "The (Mueller) questions are an intrusion into the President’s Article 2 powers under the Constitution to fire any Executive Branch Employee...what the President was thinking is an outrageous... as to the President’s unfettered power to fire anyone..." he quoted former US Attorney Joe Digenova, who has backed the absolute powers argument, as saying.
Article II gives the US president authority to control the executive branch, including law enforcement and personnel, and his supporters say such power is absolute and unfettered.
In fact, the meeting between Mueller’s team and Trump’s lawyers was so tense and the outcome so fraught for the President that it eventually led to the resignation of the John Dowd, one of President Trump’s attorneys. Dowd, who tried to not only stop Mueller from questioning the President but also dissuade Trump from agreeing to the interview, resigned when he failed in his efforts.
"This isn’t some game," he reportedly told Mueller after hearing his insistence on questioning the President. "You are scr**ing with the work of the president of the United States."
Trump’s lawyers apparently fear the President sitting down for an interview with Mueller because of his propensity to talk off the cuff and incriminate himself. The scuttlebutt in the capital is that it was Trump’s team that leaked Mueller’s questions to him to make the ground for the President to decline the interview.
Sure enough, Trump ridiculed the leak and the questions.
There are modern precedents of Presidents having to comply with subpoenas (Richard Nixon) and having to testify before grand jury (Bill Clinton). If Trump defies a subpoena and/or fires Mueller, the matter could end up in the US Supreme Court.
There is also talk of Trump taking the unprecedented step (for a US President) of 'taking the fifth' – the Fifth Amendment of US Constitution grants the right that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself"
Meanwhile, an increasingly panicky-sounding President has been tweeting furiously over the past 72 hours insisting there was no 'collusion' with the Russians, and it is all a 'witchhunt' – terms he has used more than a dozen times in recent weeks.
"There was no Collusion (it is a Hoax) and there is no Obstruction of Justice (that is a setup & trap). What there is is Negotiations going on with North Korea over Nuclear War, Negotiations going on with China over Trade Deficits, Negotiations on NAFTA, and much more. Witch Hunt!" he posted on Wednesday morning.
Trump also indicated that he could end up firing Muller by warning, "At some point I will have no choice but to use the powers granted to the Presidency and get involved!"
In between, the President recommended a "NEW BOOK - A MUST READ! ‘The Russia Hoax - The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump’ by the brilliant Fox News Legal Analyst Gregg Jarrett." He rounded off the tweet by lashing out at his own Justice Department and what some of his supporters say is a deep state establishment, saying, "A sad chapter for law enforcement. A rigged system!"
On the sidelines, Republicans have been threatening to impeach the Trump administration’s own Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the man who has green-lighted the Russia probe and had attracted the ire of Trump supporters. "They should understand by now the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted," Rosenstein said on Tuesday after Republicans leaked draft articles of impeachment.
Meanwhile, even experts who concede that a sitting US President cannot be tried on criminal charges agree that he could be impeached by the House of Representatives, which is currently under Republican control. Because some Democratic lawmakers have said they will impeach him if they win the House in the November midterm elections (when the entire House and a third of the Senate will be up for election), Trump has been exhorting his base to make sure Republicans retain the House.
