Yes, the Constitution Allows Indictment of the President

Last edited Thu Oct 24, 2019, 06:28 PM - Edit history (1)

There has been a lot of discussion within DU and in the rest of the country regarding the notion that a president cannot be indicted or prosecuted. I have not read any discussion so far that explains and analyzes the basis for this assumption. The DOJ informed Mueller that the Constitution forbids the indictment of a sitting president, and that has been our assumption ever since.

Laurence H. Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard University, disagrees. His argument is that the belief that the president is immune from prosecution is based on a misreading of the Constitution. The Constitution states that a president who has been impeached and found guilty can be indicted for their crimes. Tribe believes the statement was included to prevent the president from using double jeopardy to evade indictment for crimes after being impeached. Others have decided that the Constitution states that a president can be indicted after being removed from office through the impeachment process because that is the ONLY time a president can be indicted. Read the article and let me know what you think.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/yes-constitution-allows-indictment-president