Trump's legal team recently released an argument that says, in essence, the President is above the law. Ignoring for a second the slide that has happened in the Trump defense of "we didn't talk to the Russians, period", to "the President can't be touched," this argument to me is the most chilling statement this President has done or action he has taken (and there are a lot of things I think we'll be paying for for years).
The argument goes that the President can do whatever he wants in office without repercussion, except for those allowed through impeachment. He can use every arm of the executive branch however he sees fit, therefore he can squelch any investigation into himself and if he wants to focus the full weight of the executive branch on prosecuting political opponents, that's up to him. If Congress launches an impeachment proceeding, however, according to their argument he can have all members of Congress murdered, thereby ending the impeachment proceeding.
And before you say that last statement is absurd, that is almost exactly the argument his legal counsel, Guiliani, used when he said the President can kill political opponents (Comey) and have nothing happen to him.
Think about that for a second, our current President is making the legal argument that he can have opponents murdered and it's totally fine.
And for those of you inclined to defend Trump at all turns, this is saying that when Congress was investigating Benghazi, it was within Obama's legal right to have all the investigators murdered.
So who wants to defend this? Who really thinks the framers of our Constitution wanted to get away from what they viewed as the tyrannical rule of the British monarchy so they could create a similarly autocratic ruler in the US President? And no, this isn't an esoteric discussion, there are very serious ramifications with this kind of argument.
The argument goes that the President can do whatever he wants in office without repercussion, except for those allowed through impeachment. He can use every arm of the executive branch however he sees fit, therefore he can squelch any investigation into himself and if he wants to focus the full weight of the executive branch on prosecuting political opponents, that's up to him. If Congress launches an impeachment proceeding, however, according to their argument he can have all members of Congress murdered, thereby ending the impeachment proceeding.
And before you say that last statement is absurd, that is almost exactly the argument his legal counsel, Guiliani, used when he said the President can kill political opponents (Comey) and have nothing happen to him.
Think about that for a second, our current President is making the legal argument that he can have opponents murdered and it's totally fine.
And for those of you inclined to defend Trump at all turns, this is saying that when Congress was investigating Benghazi, it was within Obama's legal right to have all the investigators murdered.
So who wants to defend this? Who really thinks the framers of our Constitution wanted to get away from what they viewed as the tyrannical rule of the British monarchy so they could create a similarly autocratic ruler in the US President? And no, this isn't an esoteric discussion, there are very serious ramifications with this kind of argument.
