A strange and dangerous idea

FEBRUARY 29, 2020
Jane Chong
Former law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit

... in apparent response to his angry tweets, the Justice Department undercut its own prosecutors and reduced their recommended prison sentence for Roger Stone ... Trump denied having asked the .. Department to step in — but not without insisting that he had the “absolute right to do it” if he so chose.

That claim .. like a brake warning light .. tends to signal that the car is no longer safely in contact with the legal road. In May 2017, after The New York Times reported that Trump had spilled highly classified information to Russian government officials, he tweeted that he had “the absolute right to do so.” In December of that year, when asked whether the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails should be reopened, Trump invoked his “absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department.” Six months later, in June 2018, Trump tweeted that Robert Mueller’s investigation was “totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL,” and that if push came to shove, “I have the absolute right to PARDON myself” ...

... in 2019 ... Trump announced that he had the “absolute right to declare a national emergency” in order to obtain border-wall funding ... In April, Trump denied reports that he had offered to pardon the Customs and Border Protection commissioner if he were arrested for enforcing Trump’s policies at the U.S.-Mexico border, but tweeted that he had “the absolute right” to close the border. In October .. Trump claimed that he had an “absolute right, perhaps even a duty,” to ask foreign countries for help in investigating corruption. In November, he derided .. Yovanovitch .. by tweet in the middle of her testimony before the House Intelligence Committee and claimed his “absolute right to appoint ambassadors” ...

... The opening memorandum prepared by Trump’s defense team for his Senate impeachment trial .. built from its vision of an unconstrained executive the startling argument that the president cannot be impeached for abuses of power ... “It is well settled that the President has a virtually absolute right to maintain the confidentiality of his diplomatic communications with foreign leaders” ... Trump’s team cited the .. 1974 decision .. United States v. Nixon. But that decision notes nothing more than the courts’ traditional deference to the president’s claims of executive privilege over communications bearing on sensitive foreign-policy and national-security matters — and ultimately determined that President Richard Nixon had to hand over tapes subpoenaed by the special prosecutor ...

... the .. concept of “absolute rights” is .. a legal innovation by a real-estate mogul who understands power through the prism of private property rather than public obligation ...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/president-trump-absolute-rights/607168/