Not Watergate: legal woes unlikely to force Trump from office soon

“There’s no crime he could commit that would lead to the Republicans impeaching him — (for) now.”

There’s a scholarly debate about whether a sitting U.S. president could even be removed from office through criminal charges, or only via impeachment. Some believe a democratic decision would have to precede a law-enforcement move.

And impeachment is just not on the table right now.

Republicans control both chambers of Congress and, although they’ll occasionally mutter their mild frustration with the president, few are willing to openly criticize him given how popular he is with their voters, let alone remove him from office.

Most Democrats in Washington won’t even say the I-word.

Furthermore, there’s even a debate about whether the allegations against Trump, which he denies, would amount to a crime. Trump said Friday he’d be willing to testify under oath: “100 per cent.”

But constitutional law scholar Alan Dershowitz says it doesn’t make a difference if he told someone to lay off an investigation — the president has the power to pardon people, Dershowitz says, and he has authority over the police, so how is it illegal to want an investigation halted?

Many legal analysts beg to differ.

That includes two veterans of Watergate, who say they that what we’ve heard being described is indeed a crime. Some key players in that 1970s saga have resurfaced to draw parallels with the modern-day presidential scandal.

One counsel to the Watergate prosecution team, Philip Allen Lacovara, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post titled: ”I helped prosecute Watergate. Comey’s statement is sufficient evidence for an obstruction of justice case.”

An assistant prosecutor from that team says there’s evidence of ”corrupt intent up the wazoo”: Trump’s alleged loyalty demands of Comey, his requests to lay off an investigation, clearing the room of witnesses before their discussions, and hinting at firing him.

There’s also the fact he did indeed fire Comey, his admission that he had the investigation in mind when he did so, and the likelihood that Comey’s account might be corroborated by people he told at the time.

”I’d say (Trump’s) in deep trouble,” said Nick Akerman, who after Watergate became assistant attorney for New York. ”It’s not just one conversation. I’d say you have to look at the totality of the evidence…

“It would appear that Trump has put himself in the middle of an effort to obstruct the FBI investigation — which is a federal felony.”

And then what?

The Watergate team faced this same dilemma in 1974. Akerman said the team was gathering evidence against Richard Nixon for different crimes, including obstruction of justice and tax evasion: “There were a number of things he could have been indicted for.”

They decided to wait, acknowledging that American governance could be ensnared in constitutional entanglements if one branch — the president-led executive — spent all its time fighting off the judicial branch.

Their plan in 1974: let politics handle it first. If Nixon had to be charged, it would happen after he left office.

Ultimately, the prosecution team waited as elected lawmakers worked on impeachment. Nixon quit first, and was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford.

This president’s fate will also be decided by politics — not the police, according to two legal writers at Lawfare blog.

Helen Klein Murillo of the Harvard Law Review concluded the only enforcement mechanism is impeachment. The blog’s editor Benjamin Wittes said the polls are the best gauge of what’s coming: ”The old honourable-fight rule that you don’t kick a man when he’s down has never applied to politicians, who tend to observe the opposite rule — you only kick a man when he’s down.”

For the time being, Republicans will keep quiet because there’s no political benefit to antagonizing the president, said Mike Murphy, a vocal anti-Trump member of the party.

”Now I know what Vichy France must have felt like. Everybody is a patriot after six o’clock in the privacy of their own living room.”

That’s nothing like 1974, when Democrats had healthy majorities in both houses of Congress, the economy was tanking, the president’s approval was dismal and Republicans were three months away from a historic midterm-election massacre.

Midterm election voters will once again have a say, concluded an Obama ex-aide.

”Jury selection in the trial of Donald Trump’s possible obstruction of justice is November 2018, basically,” said former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau. ”That’s when you can pick a Democratic Congress that can get to the bottom of this.”

Alexander Panetta, The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

Not Watergate: legal woes unlikely to force Trump from office soon

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