Yes, a President May Be Indicted … and May Pardon Himself
All premature talk. I do believe this entire thing is a huge witch hunt. The Dems were devastated when Hillary lost. They've been in psycho mode ever since, some much worse than others.
Now, if you read correctly, without the crime, we shouldn't even be where we're at. Of course we had PROOF of Hillary crimes and it never made it this far, but whatever...
IF crimes are found, solid crimes, irrefutable evidence, and the president himself is therefore then indicted, then he's toast. And even if he's got the legal ability to somehow pardon himself, it wouldn't work, as the country would go crazy nutso, and of course government would come to a halt.
But lets not get ahead of ourselves. Again, we're not even supposed to be here without a crime already - of which there IS NONE. That alone almost proves the witch hunt and the ability of some to get ahead of themselves, and IMO, its ALL political hackery.
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Yes, a President May Be Indicted … and May Pardon Himself
The Trump-Russia “collusion” farce gets everything bass-ackwards.
As we’ve pointed out many times, collusion is not a crime; conspiracy is. To prove a conspiracy, you need more than mere association and collaborative action; you need an agreement to commit a specific statutory violation of penal law. Thus far, there is no indication that an actual crime has been committed.
Under the regulations for special-counsel appointments, there is supposed to be cause to believe a crime has been committed before a prosecutor is appointed. Yet, we have a prosecutor assigned to the case even though there is, as yet, no crime. The Justice Department has given this special counsel, Robert Mueller, carte blanche to hunt for a crime, notwithstanding that his jurisdiction is supposed to be circumscribed by the crime(s) that the Justice Department first specifies in appointing him – i.e., the suspected offenses trigger the appointment, the appointment is not supposed to trigger a search for suspected offenses.
Notwithstanding the lack of probable cause that a crime has been committed, much less any indication that the special counsel contemplates filing formal charges, two new premature questions have arisen: (1) May a president be indicted, and (2) may a president pardon himself?
INDICTMENT
The split in opinions over the first question was well summarized back in May by the New York Times’s Adam Liptak. I must say I don’t see this as a complex question: There is no legal reason why a sitting president should not be indictable. The complexities that attend the question are practical, not legal.
The president is in charge of the executive branch. The Justice Department answers to him. All U.S. attorneys are appointed by him and may be dismissed at will by him. It seems inconceivable, then, that a president would authorize his own indictment; he’d more likely dismiss any federal prosecutor who attempted to indict him. That includes any special counsel. As we have observed, there is no such thing as an independent prosecutor in our federal system. The special counsel is beholden to the attorney general (or the deputy attorney general when, as in the case of Mueller’s investigation, the attorney general has recused himself); the attorney general, in turn, is beholden to the president.
Rest here - https://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2...ardon-himself/
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