PIML 96060604 / Forwarded to Patriot Information Mailing List: [Note on another subject: If you send e-mail to PIML and don't put PIML on the subject line, it may never be read.] PIML [Why wait, impeach Clinton now!] PIML ================================================================== Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 22:42:49 -0700 (MST) To: fsnw-l@freespeechnews.com From: Free Speech Subject: [FreeSpeech-NewsWire] WILLIAM SAFIRE: Jail to the chief? WILLIAM SAFIRE: Jail to the chief? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 1996 Nando.net Copyright © 1996 N.Y. Times News Service WASHINGTON (Jun 5, 1996 8:05 p.m. EDT) -- We now know that the Clintons benefited from a criminal conspiracy to steer taxpayers' money illegally into their Whitewater venture. A separate criminal investigation is active to see if, in the Whitewater conspiracy, the Clintons attempted to obstruct justice from the White House. In a trial of two Arkansas bankers later this month, Clinton may be shown to have accepted $7,000 in perhaps-stolen cash in his office from bankers accused of buying a job from him. In the light of these and other close brushes Clinton is having with both proven and charged criminality, we can ask the unaskable: Is this president at risk of being indicted for a crime? That brings up a profound question not directly answered by the Constitution: Is a sitting president subject to prosecution for a criminal violation -- or is the holder of that office "above" the criminal law, unreachable by prosecutors and juries? I think he cannot be indicted in any criminal court while in office. This conclusion is based on the brief submitted on Oct. 5, 1973, by the U.S. solicitor general, after Vice President Spiro Agnew -- charged with accepting cash payoffs for favors done while governor -- claimed to a federal court in Maryland that a vice president could not be subject to indictment and trial while in office. Solicitor General Robert Bork argued the opposite: that the Constitution, as "an intensely practical document," did not imply an immunity for a vice president or lesser federal officials. Vice President Aaron Burr had to stay out of two states where he was indicted, but was able to exercise the powers of his office anyway. The government would not be paralyzed if any official were prosecuted -- except the president. "The president is the only officer of government for whose temporary disability the Constitution provides procedures to qualify a replacement," argued Bork, because it "incapacitates an entire branch of government." Moreover, "the framers could not have contemplated prosecution of an incumbent president because they vested in him ... the power to control prosecutions." Presidential pardoning power "is consistent only with the conclusion that the president must be removed by impeachment, and so deprived of the power to pardon, before criminal process can be instituted against him," wrote Bork, who tells me he holds the same opinion today. What must this mean to independent counsel Kenneth Starr, also a former solicitor general, as he examines potential crimes committed by the Clintons? It could mean that if the Little Rock grand jury finds credible evidence that the president was part of a criminal conspiracy, then the independent counsel would ask the jurors to limit their action to a presentment, or public report, without an indictment, at the most naming Clinton as an unindicted co-conspirator. That's little more than what Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski did in the Nixon case. The same approach -- to disclose rather than indict -- is probable in the disposition of evidence and conclusions of the D.C. grand jury regarding potential obstruction of justice in Whitewater and abuse of federal power in Travelgate. Starr would ask the court to forward the evidence to the House Judiciary Committee, on the theory expressed by the framer Gouverneur Morris at the Constitutional Convention that the courts could "try the president after the trial of impeachment." But impeachment seems Draconian, especially in an election year and in the absence of public outrage. If the White House worst-case scenario develops in coming months, Congress should promptly disclose the untried evidence and let the voters be the jury. One question that is not a constitutional issue is the ability to indict Hillary Rodham Clinton, private citizen. Her pattern of what prosecutors call "conscious avoidance" of telling the whole truth may link the conspiracy in Arkansas to the obstruction of its prosecution here, as well as to the abuse of power in Travelgate. Campaigning, Bill Clinton used to promise "two for the price of one," but the criminal law he is above while in office may accuse one for the acts of two. (William Safire is a New York Times columnist.) ================================================================== * Patriot Information Mailing List * http://constitution.org/piml/piml.htm * A service to help inform those who have an active interest in * returning our federal and state governments to limited, * constitutional government * Send messages for consideration and possible posting to * butterb@sagenet.net (Bill Utterback). * To subscribe or unsubscribe, send message with subject line * "subscribe patriot" or "unsubscribe patriot" * Forwarded messages sent on this mailing list are NOT verified. * See World's Smallest Political Quiz: www.self-gov.org/quiz.html * Libertarian is to LIBERTY as librarian is to library (DePena) * PIML grants permission to copy and repost this message * in its entirety with headers and trailers left intact.