Zippyjuan
12-04-2017, 02:00 PM
Anticipating such a charge?
http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/04/politics/trump-john-dowd-obstruct-justice/index.html
Washington (CNN)Donald Trump's personal attorney's claim that the President cannot be guilty of obstructing justice raises two stunning possibilities that could cast the Russia investigation and its threat to his White House in a new and even more serious light.
First, Trump lawyer John Dowd's comments in an interview with Axios raise the question of whether Trump's legal team has already accepted that special counsel Robert Mueller has grounds to conclude Trump did in fact obstruct justice by firing FBI Director James Comey.
If that is the case, Dowd's interview, after a weekend of spinning by Trump and aides following the announcement of a plea deal for former national security adviser Michael Flynn, leads to another profound question.
Has the White House already embarked on a public relations strategy designed to lessen the chances that the Republican House would draw up articles of impeachment against the President based on any recommendation by Mueller?
Dowd's claims did not come in isolation. They followed the President's attacks on the FBI and his raising of doubts that justice would be served by the Mueller investigation at the weekend. "It's reputation is in Tatters - worst in History!" Trump tweeted.
Orchestrated offensive?
Taken together, the Dowd and Trump comments had the feel of an orchestrated offensive to repair the damage wrought over the weekend, to discredit Mueller's findings ahead of time and to offer ammunition for pro-Trump media.
Underlying Monday's flurry of controversy is a third issue -- whether Dowd's position has any legal grounding in itself, and whether it would stand up to challenge as a defense of the President's action if Mueller finds against him in an investigation that was originally set up to probe whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during last year's election.
Dowd's interview reverberated through Washington a day after veteran Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that she saw the outlines of an obstruction of justice case forming against Trump.
It follows a series of tweets fired out by the President's Twitter account at the weekend that immediately turned the notion of obstruction of justice from a point of conversation around the Mueller probe, into an apparently active possibility.
Dowd said told Axios: "(The) President cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under (the Constitution's Article II) and has every right to express his view of any case."
The motivation for Dowd's introducing his point at this moment -- long before Mueller has concluded his probe -- is just as interesting as the legal point he makes itself.
"It tells you that the President's legal team is concerned that the President obstructed justice," Renato Mariotti a former federal prosecutor, told CNN's Kate Bolduan on Monday.
"There is absolutely no reason for the President's legal team to go out there and claim that the President cannot obstruct justice, unless they are concerned that he may have liability for that," he said.
Nixonian?
The idea that a President cannot obstruct justice may be a workable legal argument to contend with any future criminal action against Trump. Legal scholars have yet to resolve a constitutional dispute over whether a sitting president can be indicted. But it may not protect the President politically.
After all, Richard Nixon once claimed after his resignation that "when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal."
But the articles of impeachment drawn up by the House of Representatives that helped force his resignation included one accusing Nixon of obstructing justice.
Similarly, the articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton included an accusation that he had "prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice."
http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/04/politics/trump-john-dowd-obstruct-justice/index.html
Washington (CNN)Donald Trump's personal attorney's claim that the President cannot be guilty of obstructing justice raises two stunning possibilities that could cast the Russia investigation and its threat to his White House in a new and even more serious light.
First, Trump lawyer John Dowd's comments in an interview with Axios raise the question of whether Trump's legal team has already accepted that special counsel Robert Mueller has grounds to conclude Trump did in fact obstruct justice by firing FBI Director James Comey.
If that is the case, Dowd's interview, after a weekend of spinning by Trump and aides following the announcement of a plea deal for former national security adviser Michael Flynn, leads to another profound question.
Has the White House already embarked on a public relations strategy designed to lessen the chances that the Republican House would draw up articles of impeachment against the President based on any recommendation by Mueller?
Dowd's claims did not come in isolation. They followed the President's attacks on the FBI and his raising of doubts that justice would be served by the Mueller investigation at the weekend. "It's reputation is in Tatters - worst in History!" Trump tweeted.
Orchestrated offensive?
Taken together, the Dowd and Trump comments had the feel of an orchestrated offensive to repair the damage wrought over the weekend, to discredit Mueller's findings ahead of time and to offer ammunition for pro-Trump media.
Underlying Monday's flurry of controversy is a third issue -- whether Dowd's position has any legal grounding in itself, and whether it would stand up to challenge as a defense of the President's action if Mueller finds against him in an investigation that was originally set up to probe whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during last year's election.
Dowd's interview reverberated through Washington a day after veteran Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that she saw the outlines of an obstruction of justice case forming against Trump.
It follows a series of tweets fired out by the President's Twitter account at the weekend that immediately turned the notion of obstruction of justice from a point of conversation around the Mueller probe, into an apparently active possibility.
Dowd said told Axios: "(The) President cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under (the Constitution's Article II) and has every right to express his view of any case."
The motivation for Dowd's introducing his point at this moment -- long before Mueller has concluded his probe -- is just as interesting as the legal point he makes itself.
"It tells you that the President's legal team is concerned that the President obstructed justice," Renato Mariotti a former federal prosecutor, told CNN's Kate Bolduan on Monday.
"There is absolutely no reason for the President's legal team to go out there and claim that the President cannot obstruct justice, unless they are concerned that he may have liability for that," he said.
Nixonian?
The idea that a President cannot obstruct justice may be a workable legal argument to contend with any future criminal action against Trump. Legal scholars have yet to resolve a constitutional dispute over whether a sitting president can be indicted. But it may not protect the President politically.
After all, Richard Nixon once claimed after his resignation that "when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal."
But the articles of impeachment drawn up by the House of Representatives that helped force his resignation included one accusing Nixon of obstructing justice.
Similarly, the articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton included an accusation that he had "prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice."