Just as a reminder all executive branch departments derive the entirety of their authority and power from the president. They are in no way independent of the president and do not derive their authority directly from the Congress independent of the president. They do not constitute a separate branch of government.
It is true of the Department of Justice. It is true of the Department of State. It is true of all executive branch departments.
If you don’t like the president, impeach him. If you don’t like that arrangement, amend the Constitution.
Which is why I noted that Mueller writing a report of having a press conference that was a defacto impeachment guide or plea is absurd. His report goes to the DoJ, period. I noted he walked back a point yesterday.
I think you, and others, have been correct in asserting “either impeach or shut up.”
Media and Dems don’t like the politics of that, so they just keep the issue alive. Good for fundraising. Good to campaign on. But they, like Mueller, are cowards.
My view is that the constant caviling isn’t improving the Democrats’ position and it is undermining confidence in the system. It’s lose-lose.
Why do you think Nancy Pelosi isn’t immediately jumping on the impeachment bandwagon? She thinks that if the House impeaches she’ll lose the House and if she doesn’t leave the possibility of impeachment open she’ll lose the speakership. It’s a calculation that doesn’t take the good of the country much into account. I think she should either begin impeachment proceedings or discipline her membership. One or the other of those courses is the best for the country but risky for her, personally.
So this gets into lawyering territory, where common sense is irrelevant. While the president has authority over those departments, as I understand it the president derives his authority from he Constitution. So lets take an extreme but believable case. The president has some hooker killed because he accidentally told her stuff that could cause him to lose billions of dollars. The Department of Justice decides to investigate the case (not likely but it is possible). The president orders them to not investigate. As I understand it the president would have the authority to tell them, but it is behavior not sanctioned buy the Constitution so it would be illegal? Or it is legal for the president to tell DOJ to do anything he wants? Does DOJ, State, etc have any responsibility vis a vis the Constitution?
Steve
The only federal agencies and departments for which there are good constitional arguments are the Postal Service, the Treasury, State, and Defense. The Department of Justice didn’t even exist until 1870. Without knowing the empowering legislation I can’t say confidently but it seems to me that the president could just shutter the Department of Justice solely on his own authority for any pretext whatever.
Basically, the answer to your question is that the president can tell the DoJ to do anything he wants them to do. If the president were to direct them to do something illegal, they have an ethical responsibility to resign. Sitting on the sidelines taking potshots is both illegal and unethical.
The questions of what’s right vs. what’s legal are two different questions.
So when Nixon ordered his AG to fire the prosecutor he resigned, the next guy resigned, then you got to the sleaze ball Bork who was promised a shot at the Supreme Court so he did the firing. But, I think that even there lawyers can, because they always do, come up with some argument to justify behavior. What if the president tells them to do something clearly illegal. Seems to me that they still have an obligation to the Constitution and would have the responsibility to do more than resign.
Steve
Sure. Once they have resigned they have a responsibility to bring clearly illegal actions to the attention of the authorities, whether in DoJ or Congress. Or even to alert the press.
But federal employees are not a government unto themselves.
https://youtu.be/xIAJl-wZElg
The point is that a _sitting_ President cannot be prosecuted by the Attorney General’s Office.
PD- But cant they report illegal behavior on his part? Is it illegal for them to do that? (So, I am probably mixing in my military experience here. The POTUS is CinC, but military take an oath to uphold the Constitution. The POTUS can order anything he wants, but as an officer you do have the option of not carrying out an order if it is illegal. If what we have is presidency where POTUS can order people to do anything he wants, and they cant report it or do anything other than resign we have more of an imperial presidency than I had realized. )
Steve
The model you’re proposing suggests we should repeal the Civil Service Act.
@steve
Murder is prosecuted at the local level. This is true for robbery, burglary, and rape.
In the military, it is illegal for enlisted and officers to obey an illegal order(s). It is not optional, and “I was following orders” is not allowed as a justification.
Furthermore, the DOJ opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted is not in the constitution, and it would be challenged as soon as it was invoked.
“So this gets into lawyering territory, where common sense is irrelevant.” ~ Steve
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.†~ Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
@steve, when the President tells an executive official to do something they believe is illegal or unethical, the choices are do it or don’t do it. When Andrew Jackson ordered his Treasury secretary to withdraw all of the government’s deposits from the 2nd Bank of the U.S., the secretary told him it would be illegal and declined to do it. I don’t think it was incumbent on him to do anything else. The President then had a choice of withdrawing his demand or firing him. Jackson choose the later. Acting Treasury Secretary Roger Taney then proceeded to withdraw funds from the Bank.
https://www.wklaw.com/10-ways-murder-becomes-a-federal-crime/
Steve
Thomas Jefferson: “The leading principle of our Constitution is the independence of the Legislature, executive and judiciary of each other, and none are more jealous of this than the judiciary. But would the executive be independent of the judiciary if he were subject to the commands of the latter, & to imprisonment for disobedience; if the several courts could bandy him from pillar to post, keep him constantly trudging from north to south & east to west, and withdraw him entirely from his constitutional duties? The intention of the Constitution, that each branch should be independent of the others, is further manifested by the means it has furnished to each to protect itself from enterprises of force attempted on them by the others, and to none has it given more effectual or diversified means than to the executive.”
@steve
With the exception of #7, those are all local crimes, and #7 may be a local crime as well. A federal criminal statute does not supercede the state or city version.
If somebody kidnaps a person in one state, that is a local crime. If the kidnapper crosses a stateline, that is a local crime in that state, and it is now a federal crime, also.
Mail fraud is a federal crime, only.
If the president kidnaps somebody in one state, transports them across a stateline, kills the person, skins the victim, sells the skin as cowhide, and uses the US Postal System to deliver the fraudulent item, he could be charged with mail fraud, and he would have to wait, in a prison cell, until he was out of office to be charged with mail fraud.
Now, I see your point, and I must agree. It is a travesty that must be remedied, at once.
“Why do you think Nancy Pelosi isn’t immediately jumping on the impeachment bandwagon? “
I think we all know. She’s smart and politically savvy. Impeach and she alienates the sane middle. Don’t and she demotivates the loonies. But she signed up for the job.
Your first comment shows incredible ignorance, steve. And it’s currently relevant. Mueller could recommend indictment to the AG. He just can’t indict. Barr and Rosenstein (and perhaps others) declined to indict on the basis of the facts presented in the report and the law. You, or others of your ilk, must make the case that Barr, Rosenstein and Other are wrong, or crooked. Have at it. And your hypothetical is an absurd straw man.
Else its up to Congress. Have at it.
Only about 10% of the Senate and House have shown themselves to be clownish enough to pursue this. Admittedly, almost 90% of media, Pres hopefuls and deranged commenters are on board.
Have at it.
And then we have Mueller. Running away like a yellow dog. I guess he didn’t want to have at it.
Drew, Mueller wants to avoid looking more biased, and a lapdog for the dems, than he possibly can. So, he leaves slimy innuendos in his 8 minute parting shot, then says he is done, hoping that no one subpoenas him for details, timelines, why he didn’t dig into the obvious DNC/HRC collusion with Russia, when did he knew there was no Trump/Russian collusion (some assert it was up to a year before) but never came forward with said conclusion until well after the midterms, and after an AG was present who would not recuse himself or be intimidated by specious threats issued by the democrats.
Lawyers with outstanding credentials, like Turley, Durchowitz (both Democrats) and Andy McCarthy have shown nothing but disgust for how Mueller (a republican) professionally conducted himself. Consequently, seeing Mueller, for what he is – a shrewd government man who manipulated what he was tasked to do – is not about party loyalty, but rather how honest the head of this investigation really was.
Here is something excerpted from AG Barr’s recent interview warranting some bipartisan reflection:
“One of the ironies today is that people are saying it is President Trump who is shredding our institutions. I really see no evidence of that. From my perspective, the idea of ‘resisting’ a democratically elected president and basically throwing everything at him, and really changing the norms on the grounds that we have to stop this president. That’s where the shredding of our norms and institutions is occurring.”
Barr is the President’s lawyer, typical of an AG but more so than most. He forgets, as do you guys, that McConnell said their number one job was to make sure Obama didn’t get re- elected, so this idea of opposing a president shredding Norms is bizarre. Heck, you guys impeached someone for lying about sex.
And then you claim politics isn’t beanbag. You just don’t like it when you have your own actions come back at you. 8 Benghazi investigations. None finding anything really new after the first. Now even one congressional investigation would be too many.
Drew- Barr et al declined to indict on the basis of party affiliation. And you guys are still confused by the actions of an honorable investigator. You give us slimeballs like Start, so I guess that confusion is understandable.
Steve
I recall McConnell making that “one-term” comment only once, at the beginning of Obama’s presidency. You, OTOH Steve, have repeated it like a worn-out slogan, apparently to accent how wronged Obama was by the republicans. However, how many times, in comparison, has the democrat resistance vocally called for Trump’s impeachment? Called him a dictator and worse? Hundreds, maybe?
You also recite the number of Benghazi hearings without ever addressing how the Obama administration prevaricated, issued NDAs, balked at giving over emails and documentation, stretching Congress’s time and thinning their ability to ascertain what really happened during that tragic event. Such tactics were not used by the Trump WH in the Mueller Investigation. But it doesn’t matter to the democrats how cooperative or timely this WH was, only that something went wrong in nailing the president to the wall. So, now the justification to not accept the investigation’s report is questioning why the president declined a sit-down with Mueller. Â
As for Barr, he has not tied himself to Trump, unlike Eric Holder who openly, defiantly called himself “Obama’s wing man.” Instead, Barr has made it very clear his job as DOJ is to install leadership and direction into the DOJ, along with exposing any abuses of power that may have occurred before, during and after the 2016 presidential election. Following constitutional jurisprudence, though, is not what Barr is being called out on. Instead, it’s that he’s not caving into the demands of a hostile house — hence the democrat establishment’s public attempts to trash his reputation as an honest, independent AG. So, far Barr seems unruffled and undeterred, continuing to declassify, uncover and clarify timelines and facts that “don’t jive” — puzzle parts that have spread a sordid and distrusting cloud over the entire SC investigation from beginning to end. I personally don’t see why any non-partisan person would be nothing but pleased to have the truth exposed — be it good, bad or ugly.