Saturday, February 15, 2020

Trump Claims He Has 'Legal Right' To Meddle With DOJ But Former Officials Say It Would Be A 'Grossly Improper' Abuse of Power

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-claims-he-has-legal-right-meddle-doj-former-officials-say-it-would-grossly-improper-1487399


"The president arguably, as head of the executive branch, has the constitutional authority and discretion to give direction to the Department of Justice or any other executive branch. But it is grossly improper and an abuse of that discretion for the president to seek to influence a criminal investigation," David Laufman, the DOJ's former counterintelligence chief, told Newsweek.
He added that throughout the history of the Justice Department there have been "explicit understandings" in how the White House can communicate with the law enforcement agency—until now.
"I can't think of any president in recent modern history that has repeatedly made public statements about pending criminal investigations, prosecutions or trials with the intent to influence them," Laufman said.
Former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman agreed, noting that there's nothing in the Constitution preventing Trump from telling the attorney general how to handle a certain case but that it's "just never done."
"It's never done because it looks like the president is interfering in the system of justice, that he is putting his own personal beliefs on top of what we want as even-handed enforcement of our criminal law," Akerman told Newsweek. "This is something unique to Donald Trump."
 

5 comments :

  1. On to Bernie and commuism! Oh yeah!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. The question is, is the President obligated to excersize his obligation to control a government agency, or can he farm it out to others? And then get blamed when the employees he's not being permitted to control, mess up.

    No other employee-employer relationship works that way. And US attorneys are employees of the President.

    ReplyDelete
  3. so if he uses the DOJ to protect his friends and punish foes you think that is ok?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Read it and weep.
    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.foxnews.com/politics/alan-dershowitz-obama-george-soros.amp

    ReplyDelete
  5. deshowitz basically is saying "believe me " - and produces no evidence
    after his crazy "anything a politician does to get reelected is fine" he has zero credibility

    ReplyDelete

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