Aside from the assumption that there is a US citizen who is above the law, the Justice Department policy that says that a sitting president cannot be indicted fails on its initial logic. According to legal theorist, the President of the United States is way too busy to deal with all the hassles of facing criminal charges while he is in office. The problem is, modern presidents have a lot of free time. Donald Trump has plenty of time for his ridiculous rallies. Like his predecessors, he watches sports. He golfs one out of every three days. He’s always on Twitter. Let’s face it: being too busy just isn’t a good excuse.
Can Trump Be Indicted? He Certainly Has Enough Free Time to Deal with Legal Procedings
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My immediate reaction is that the more time Mr Trump spends on things like golf, rallies, watching sports, meeting queens (nota bene, not that sort of queen), etc, etc, the better. Then I’m reminded of people in his administration like Michael Richard Pence, Michael Richard Pompeo, John Robert Bolton, Robert Emmet Lighthizer, etc, etc, ad nauseam, and I begin to want him to apply himself to the job….
Henri
Well it’s the same system that always has applied, innit?
Teddy Kennedy should have gotten some jail time for his drunk driving on Cape Cod back in July 1969 and the resulting suffocation death (Mary Jo Kopechne did not drown, she was in an air pocket. Had Kennedy gone to the nearest house–a porch light was on–and used the phone, the necessary equipment to pull out the car and rescue the woman would have turned the whole thing into a footnote in the second Pres. Kennedy’s biographies).
Nixon should have gotten jail time, but, hey, we can’t imprison an ex-president (and if anyone thinks Trump will ever see a jail cell for any of his shady business dealings, you’re smoking way too much crack).
Pres. Cheney’s money-making schemes and the illegal war he started? He should be in jail too. As well as Obama and Trump for continuing those wars. Hillary Clinton and her cronies down at the dnc? They, literally, tampered with the primary elections.
None of these people will see jail. And if you were one of them, if you knew you could, literally, murder people and not be called to account for it, can you honestly say you wouldn’t kill, cheat, or steal?
«And if you were one of them, if you knew you could, literally, murder people and not be called to account for it, can you honestly say you wouldn’t kill, cheat, or steal?» An interesting point, Alex, but on the other hand, since most of us are not one of those people, it’s not so strange that we don’t want the killing, cheating, or stealing to be done to us….
Henri
@alex – yeppers.
I think the underlying principle is sound: the president’s a busy guy with a unique and important job. (Or rather, he *should* be – our current example isn’t exactly doing that job.)
Which is why congress has the power to reign him in. SOMEbody’s got to decide whether starting unnecessary trade wars is more important than the crimes we know damn good & well Trump has already committed. (we’ll go with emoluments and obstruction. They’re more than enough to qualify as ‘high crimes and misdemeanors.’)
The reason for these excuses is that our legislators and other politicians and bureaucrats are loath to indict or impeach the president because it leads to instability and uncontrollable outcomes. I strongly doubt if there is more to it than that. But talking about it is fun, and gratifies the need to try to do harm to the Other Team.
Special kudos to the Trump image in the upper left.
1. Trump has no pants and no underwear during his 3 a.m. tweeting on the toilet. I’m assuming he goes from the bed to the bidet, so this must be how he sleeps. I now have a permanently burned-in image in my mind of Trump sleeping NOT in pajamas, NOT in the nude, NOT in his boxers and a T-shirt, but only in a T-shirt. Jesus Q. Jesus, he can’t even get that right?
2. Are those bone spurs on the ankles? My God, they look like the parasitic twin from “Total Recall.” Do they give Trump advice? Are they to blame for all Trump’s screw ups?