Laurence Tribe, Dec. 15: Why Trump can be charged with obstruction

http://www.macleans.ca/opinion/why-trump-can-be-charged-with-obstruction/

A president who offers to keep the FBI Director in his job if but only if the Director agrees to “go easy” on a national security director who has lied to the FBI about his dealings with a hostile foreign power is both offering a bribe and obstructing justice. And, if he does so with the motive of covering up his campaign’s conspiracy against the United States in orchestrating foreign interference with our presidential election, that president is engaged in a particularly pernicious form of obstruction whether or not the technical requirements for the federal statutory crime of bribery have been met.

The same would be true in spades if the President were to engineer a Mueller Massacre to rid himself of what he clearly sees as a meddlesome investigation into foreign activities that he fears might undermine the legitimacy of his presidency. Placing presidential pride above the nation’s sovereignty is a grave abuse of presidential power by anyone’s definition. To insist that the proceedings against such a lawless president be categorized under some heading other than obstruction of justice is to reduce a grave matter of national security and the rule of law to a trivial word game.

Having made these points, I’m uninterested in protracting this disagreement or going back and forth over the same well-trod legal territory. My view of Alan’s position, like Gertrude Stein’s view of Oakland, can be stated simply: There’s no “there” there.

I do want to note for the record, however, a particular mistake that I don’t recall Alan making in earlier iterations of his position but that he has made in his latest publication in Maclean’s. To explain his understanding of the separation of powers and its implications for his denial that President Trump could ever be prosecuted (or impeached, though Alan is less clear on that score) for how he performs his “constitutionally authorized duties,” Alan invokes the special shield the Constitution accords to members of the House and Senate in performing their official functions. He then equates that shield with the sweeping immunity he claims the Constitution gives the president even when the president’s means of, or motives for, exercising his executive powers (to pardon someone or to get rid of a federal prosecutor, for instance – presumably including Special Counsel Robert Mueller) are demonstrably corrupt or otherwise unlawful.

That’s an equation the Constitution refutes rather than supports.

SNIP