This is from John Dean's piece about the SOTU lies (plural), which has been posted, but I thought this was worth a thread in its own right. I hadn't been aware of this specific statute, which applies to what Shrump did. Nice bit of ammunition for us all here:
Could Bush, and his aides, be stonewalling because it is a crime to give false information to Congress? It wasn't a crime in President Polk's day. Today, it is a felony under the false statements statute.
This 1934 provision makes it a serious offense to give a false information to Congress. It is little used, but has been actively available since 1955.
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Two members of the Bush administration, Admiral John Poindexter and Elliot Abrams, learned about this false statements law the hard way, during the Iran Contra investigation. Abrams pled guilty to two misdemeanors for false statements to Congress, as did Robert McFarlane. (Both were subsequently pardoned by President George H.W. Bush.) Poindexter and Oliver North fought the charges, and won on an unrelated legal technicality.
Later, one of McFarlane's lawyers, Peter W. Morgan, wrote a law journal article about using the false statements statute to prosecute executive officials appearing before Congress. Morgan was troubled by the breadth of the law. It does not require a specific intent to deceive the Congress. It does not require that statements be written, or that they be sworn. Congress is aware of the law's breadth and has chosen not to change it.
Maybe presciently, Morgan noted that the false statements statute even reaches "misrepresentations in a president's state of the union address." To which I would add, a criminal conspiracy to mislead Congress, which involved others at the Bush White House, could also be prosecuted under a separate statute, which makes it a felony to conspire to defraud the government.Link to Dean's article:
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20030718.htmlLink to "false statements" statute reference:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/ts_search.pl?title=18&sec=1001Link to defrauding the government statute:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/ts_search.pl?title=18&sec=371on edit: added the other statute link
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