Author: Alan M. Dershowitz Via Gatestone Institute
It should come as no surprise, therefore, that presidents are exempted from certain laws that are applicable to the rest of us. They cannot be prosecuted while serving in office. That, too, is the law.
- The argument against allowing state prosecutors to rummage through a sitting president's papers and documents is that there is no limiting principle.... A president who received subpoenas from hundreds or thousands of local jurisdictions could become overwhelmed by the task of assisting his lawyers in thoroughly vetting them for claims of privilege. This is not a fanciful prospect in our current age in which the criminal justice system has been weaponized by both parties seeking partisan advantage.
- So the Supreme Court's decision.... may also constitute a setback for the power of the presidency and our system of separation of powers and federalism.
- Despite the unanimity of the justices, I think the case was wrongly decided. If a sitting president cannot constitutionally be tried for a crime, it should follow that he should not be compelled to be a defendant in a civil case, since civil cases can be brought by anybody for nearly anything. I think the recent case was wrongly decided as well. No sitting president should be burdened by an unlimited number of subpoenas from an unlimited number of local district attorneys, at least some of whom may be motivated by partisan or self-serving considerations.
It is a truism that no person is above the law, but under our Constitution certain office holders are exempt from certain laws. That does not place them above the law. That is the law. For example, members of Congress cannot be held criminally or civilly accountable for action taken (with few exceptions) while in, or on the way to and from, Congress. In other words, a Senator cannot be prosecuted while driving drunk to a Senate debate. The rest of us can be arrested for driving drunk to our jobs. Judges, too, have broad immunity for what they do and say on the bench. It should come a no surprise, therefore, that presidents are exempted from certain laws that are applicable to the rest of us. They cannot be prosecuted while serving in office. That, too, is the law.
The question raised by a recent 7-2 decision of the Supreme Court was whether the records of a sitting president can be subpoenaed from a third party — in this case his financial advisers — as part of a state criminal investigation. There are good arguments on both sides of that question.
The argument for allowing a state to investigate a sitting president, beyond the truism that no one is above the law, is that there is no constitutional bar to prosecuting any president after they leave office. Since evidence gets stale and lost, it would seem to follow that an investigative agency should be able to secure evidence while the president is in office to be used after he leaves office, so long as it is still within the statute of limitations.
The argument against allowing state prosecutors to rummage through a sitting president's papers and documents is that there is no limiting principle. If the District Attorney of Manhattan can conduct an investigation and subpoena documents, so can the district attorneys of every city and county across the United States. There would, of course, have to be a jurisdictional nexus between the president and the jurisdiction investigating him.
So the Supreme Court's decision may have been a temporary win for candidate Donald Trump, since it is virtually impossible that any of his records will be disclosed before this November's election, but it may also constitute a setback for the power of the presidency and our system of separation of powers and federalism. Full Article @ The Federalist
Scamocracy in America
How a fraudulent ruling class plundered our most precious inheritance.
Over the past fifty years the rules of public and even of private life in America have well-nigh reversed, along with the meaning of common words, e.g. marriage, merit, and equality. Social inequality, even more than economic, has increased as personal safety and freedom have plummeted. People are subject to arbitrary power as never before. No one voted for these changes.
Consider: Does the ruling class’s shutdown of America, supposedly to save us from Covid-19, have anything in common with its campaign for all manner of racial preferences in the name of racial equality? How about with its campaign against fossil fuels to save us from Global Warming? What does it have in common with establishing the proper relationship between the sexes by promoting divorce and abortion, by presuming men guilty of sexual assault, and by redefining sex? Does it resemble in any way the dumbing down of American education that resulted from the manifold increases in educational spending that promised the opposite? Read More
Mena Murders Revisited
Judicial Watch Discloses Secret CIA Report
CIA, Clintons, DEA Who Done it?In August 1987, the bodies of 2 boys, Don Henry 16-years old Kevin Ives 17-years old were run over by by a cargo train in Alexander, Arkansas as they lay on the tracks. They were already dead when the train hit them
Mena, was one of the worlds busiest drug smuggling hubs in the world. Arkansas, at the time was not unlike the coconut kingdoms and banana republics of Latin America, anything and just about anyone could be bought for the right price. It was a state politically monopolized by Democrats and Bill Clinton's Arkansas Crime Syndicate was at the top of the food chain. Conspiracy theories have linked Clinton, the CIA and DEA to the murders .... Judicial Watch recently obtained new documents related to mysterious Mena Airfield in Arkansas. They shed more light on what happened at Mena and what then-Governor Bill Clinton knew about it. Read More