Get educated zzBru
and have your Doc check your meds
nationalreview.com
This is precisely why the courts have recognized “executive privilege,” a qualified privilege that enables a president to shield information unless a prosecutor can demonstrate that its disclosure is critical to an investigation. Given that the president is the chief executive and can fire federal prosecutors at will, it is not clear how a prosecutor would have authority to oppose a presidential assertion of privilege. But the upshot is obvious: A prosecutor should not be permitted to seek information from a president unless there is evidence of a serious crime in which the president is implicated, and there is no alternative source from which the prosecutor could obtain the information sought.
This is certainly clear enough to the Justice Department when, as sometimes happens, a defendant in a trial attempts to subpoena some top government official on the theory that the official might have relevant information. The Justice Department routinely fights off these efforts, arguing that there is no basis to burden these officials in the absence of proof that the testimony sought is critically important to the case and there is no alternative source from which the information can be elicited.
This makes perfect sense. If there were any other rule, these officials would be unable to perform the responsibilities of their public offices — responsibilities that are more vital to the nation than the case in question. And plainly, no other government official’s responsibilities compare to the importance of the president’s.
"There are thus very good reasons why Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein should step in and prevent Special Counsel Mueller from seeking to question the president. But I want to leave you with a different thought. How are we supposed to grapple with whether the president should be compelled to testify when we don’t know what Mueller is alleging? What crime does Mueller want to ask the president about? And if there isn’t one, why are we even talking about an interview, let alone a subpoena?
Yes, all prosecutors want to maintain investigative secrecy. In the vast majority of cases, the enforcement of the law after a serious crime has been committed outweighs other concerns; secrecy enables prosecutors to investigate without smearing innocent people, so we respect the need for it. But secrecy is not an absolute requirement; it must give way when outweighed by other considerations.
Can anyone conceivably contend that a prosecutor’s desire to maintain secrecy until the prosecutor is good and ready to reveal details of his investigation is more important to our society than the damage caused by potentially unfounded suspicion that the president is a criminal?
It has become ludicrous. The question of whether a prosecutor should be permitted to interview a president hinges on whether the president is a suspect. There is no public evidence that President Trump is. This raises the patent objection that he should not be asked to be interviewed under those circumstances. What we hear in response is, “How do you know he’s not a suspect?” But the reason we don’t know — other than the lack of evidence after two years — is that Mueller won’t deign to tell us, and Rosenstein won’t deign to comply, publicly, with regulations that required him to outline the basis for a criminal investigation." |
