Can A President Be Indicted While In Office?

The following italicized opinion is by Laurence H. Tribe, a Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard University, as it appeared in the Atlantic.

In a recent opinion piece, I argued that the text and structure of the Constitution, a serious commitment to the rule of law, and plain good sense combine to preclude a rigid policy of “delaying any indictment of a president for crimes committed in winning the presidency.”

But come on folks, it doesn’t require a legal scholar to understand that a president isn’t above the law. Every eighth grader should know that in our three branches of government Congress make the laws, the Judicial interprets them and the executive administers them.

This means that no memo coming out of the Executive branch carries the weight of law — period. Therefore when Robert Mueller comes before Congressional Democrats they must ask him by what authority did he determine that could not indict a sitting president? I mean an Executive Branch memo is nothing more than an internal memo.

In other words the Executive Branch can’t write its own special laws, nor since it isn’t the Judicial branch can it interpret what is or isn’t a law. If the Constitution wanted to exclude a sitting president from the basic laws that govern ordinary citizens it surely would have indicated such.

Memos of any branch of government can’t set precedent, only laws. The president is limited to veto power over proposed legislation.

Someone must indict the bastard.