Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff is requesting that the Department of Justice change guidelines that prohibit a sitting President from being indicted.
The call comes as President Trump’s former lawyer has been sentenced to three years in prison for tax evasion, lying to Congress, and other crimes. Michael Cohen arranged payment on behalf of Trump to cover up an affair he allegedly. The implication by Democrats is that he did so at the direction of the President himself, something that remains to be proven.
Schiff believes the DOJ needs to rewrite the rules, established during the Nixon administration, as a means to prevent Trump from allegedly ‘escaping justice.’
“I think the Justice Department needs to re-examine that OLC opinion, the Office of Legal Counsel opinion,” Schiff told CNN, “that you cannot indict a sitting president under circumstances in which the failure to do so may mean that person escapes justice.”
RT @thehill: Rep. Adam Schiff: “I think the Justice Department needs to reexamine that OLC opinion – Office of Legal Counsel opinion – that you cannot indict a sitting president.” https://t.co/zPqiFP4ZqA pic.twitter.com/ffAdru55tP
— Trixy Wh (@trixywh) December 14, 2018
It’s already been established that a sitting president can’t be indicted
While many in the mainstream media scoffed at the notion, President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani has already revealed that Mueller has no intention of indicting Trump, as per the DOJ guidelines.
“They (the special counsel’s office) acknowledge the fact that they can’t indict us,” Giuliani told NBC News in May. “They know they don’t have that power.”
The DOJ guidelines read, “The indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting President would unconstitutionally undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions.”
Schiff is acknowledging that Giuliani is right with his call to now change the rules because the man in office is Trump.
“If it were the case that it was now or never … that ought to create certainly an exception to that OLC rule if not mean revisiting and revising the rule altogether,” he claimed.
Mark Levin says it’s not happening
Constitutional lawyer Mark Levin has some bad news for Schiff. It is his determination that the rule stating a President cannot be indicted is something that will not be defied.
“A sitting president CANNOT be indicted,” he wrote on Facebook. “That’s official DOJ policy since 1973. Neither the Special Counsel nor the SDNY nor Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein can defy that 45-year-old policy.”
Adam Schiff, of the Soviet school of politics https://t.co/RcsdtRrVfX
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) December 13, 2018
Levin asserted, as the President has, that the payments to persuade someone alleging an affair go away amount to private transactions, something former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards successfully argued when he used campaign funds to hide an extramarital affair while running for office.
“These private payments can be made in any manner or any amount,” he wrote. “To underscore, there’s no reporting requirement because they’re not campaign payments made with or without campaign funds.”
Rewriting rules to indict a man you disagree with politically is the kind of action that earned Schiff the description of ‘irresponsible buffoon’ from Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
It’s also an important reminder that Schiff is really pushing the campaign finance violation because he knows there is little to no evidence of collusion with Russia on the part of the Trump campaign.
In the end, we all know what this is a play for: impeachment. An indictment ultimately means the Congress will attempt to remove the President from office. Schiff isn’t fooling a soul.
