NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW
Harvard Law Professor Says President Can Be Indicted: ‘If Trump Shot Someone He’d Be Indicted in a New York Minute’
Laurence Tribe is a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School. He’s argued cases before the Supreme Court 36 times, and he’s taught students who went on to become U.S. Senators, Supreme Court justices, and even a U.S. President. Among them, Barack Obama, John Roberts, Elena Kagan, and Ted Cruz.
And he’s become an outspoke critic of President Donald Trump.
Tribe is going after the Justice Department’s policy – which is not law and not in the Constitution – that bars prosecutors from moving to have a sitting U.S. President indicted by a grand jury.
He made the case back in May.
“Nothing” in the “text, structure, or history” of the U.S. Constitution says a sitting President cannot be indicted, Tribe said:
Some people claim that, even if Rosenstein gives Mueller permission to indict Trump as DOJ rules allow, the Constitution forbids such indictment. No! Nothing in its text, structure, or history supports that “POTUS-is- above-the-law” view, nor does any SCOTUS precedent support it.
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) May 19, 2018
Back in August, suggesting Michael Cohen’s guilty plea means Trump is equally guilty, Tribe said Trump’s crimes are both impeachable and indictable offenses:
In addition to being impeachable, Trump’s election law offenses were FEDERAL CRIMES committed when he was a private citizen in Trump Tower. If Mueller decides he shouldn’t indict @POTUS in DC, the US Attorney for SDNY might give thought to doing so in NY. He has the evidence now. https://t.co/FjEL2TnWST
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) August 22, 2018
And Monday morning, Tribe issued perhaps the best example yet – ironic, too, after Trump claimed he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and “wouldn’t lose voters.”
Here’s what Tribe says would happen if Trump, indeed, tested his own claim:
I just don’t get it. If Trump shot someone, he’d be indicted in a New York minute. Nothing in the Constitution prevents his indictment for directing a criminal conspiracy to steal the presidency. Certainly not a DOJ “policy.”
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) December 10, 2018
Image: Screenshot via YouTube
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Navy SEALs described their colleague Edward Gallagher, whose war crimes were pardoned by President Donald Trump, as “freaking evil.”
The New York Times obtained video interviews and private group text messages that show their concern over Gallagher’s bloodlust.
“The guy is freaking evil,” Special Operator First Class Craig Miller told investigators.
At one point Miller, like some of the other battle-hardened SEALs who broke the code of silence to report Gallagher, began weeping.
“Sorry about this,” Miller said. “It’s the first time — I’m really broken up about this.”
“The guy was toxic,” Special Operator First Class Joshua Vriens, a sniper, said in a separate interview.
“You could tell he was perfectly okay with killing anybody that was moving,” Special Operator First Class Corey Scott, a medic in the platoon, told investigators.
Gallagher was accused of war crimes, including murder, but acquitted by a military jury in July on all but a single relatively minor charge, and was then cleared of all punishment last month by the president, who then invited him over the Christmas break to his Mar-A-Lago resort.
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