Mueller’s Posers Mean It Would Be a Mistake For Trump To Talk

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

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NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

The questions special counsel Robert Mueller supposedly wants to put to President Trump make one thing clear — it would be folly for the president to sit for an interview with these jumped-up G-men.

It’s not just that the questions badly undercut the claims that Mr. Mueller is not targeting the president. If, as the saying goes, a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich, Mr. Mueller appears to be building out of Mr. Trump a Dagwood special.

It’s also that for the president to sit down for an interview would be to acknowledge Mr. Mueller’s authority to begin with. Yet the more Mr. Mueller shows his hand, the more illogical his authority starts to look.

That’s because the only authority the Constitution clearly grants to investigate a sitting president is the impeachment process. Before this fight is over, Mr. Trump may yet want to use that argument.

Mr. Mueller’s questions for the president were reported Tuesday by The New York Times. It says it obtained four dozen of the posers, without saying whether they came from Mr. Mueller’s camp or Mr. Trump’s (or elsewhere).

No matter, really (Mr. Mueller is not disputing the questions). They include the kind of verbal traps a prosecutor would set if he wanted to make his ham sandwich using, say, obstruction of justice.

Mr. Mueller’s questions start with General Michael Flynn, whom Mr. Trump fired as national security adviser. Mr. Mueller wants to know what efforts were made to “reach out” to General Flynn about a “possible pardon.”

When General Flynn started cooperating with the FBI, the Times claims, “Trump’s lawyers floated the idea of a pardon.” It says Mr. Mueller wants to know why.

That suggests Mr. Mueller’s team is fishing for a charge that Mr. Trump tried to obstruct justice by using the pardon power. Never mind that the pardon is the least-fettered power any president has.

Where are the liberal papers on this outrage? Even the Times objected when, in 2014, a grand jury in Texas indicted the then governor, Rick Perry, for using his constitutional veto power.

Perry had threatened to veto funding for a public-integrity prosecutor. Liberal foghorns (among them the Times, USA Today, the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times) warned that prosecuting a veto was out of line. Superlawyer Alan Dershowitz likened it to the Soviet Union.

Texas courts tossed out the case against Mr. Perry on the grounds that wielding a constitutional power like the veto isn’t a crime. Yet Mr. Mueller appears to be doing a similar thing with the pardon power.

It would be analogous to the constitutional power a president has to fire his officers. This shows up in questions about whether Mr. Trump was toying with the idea of firing Attorney General Sessions.

Could that have been obstruction of justice? Mr. Mueller seems to think so. He has a raft of queries about the AG, starting with what Mr. Trump thought of Mr. Sessions recusing himself from the Russia probe.

We already know the answer to that. Mr. Trump thought he deserved an attorney general who doesn’t feel the need to recuse himself from the most important investigation on his watch. Is that a crime?

Mr. Mueller is also looking for an angle on Russia collusion, which was part of his actual assignment. This is suggested by a host of questions the Times reports Mr. Mueller has posed.

The first is when Mr. Trump “became aware” of the meeting with the Russian lawyer offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. The President’s son, Don Jr., the Times notes, has said he didn’t tell his father of the meeting when it happened.

Clearly, Mr. Mueller is trying to trip up one of them. The long and the short of it, though, is that it looks like Mr. Mueller’s aim is to put the president in the dock.

Meaning, indict him on obstruction or other crimes — which he probably doesn’t have the authority to do anyway — or, more likely, fish up something for Congress to use as the basis for impeachment.

To prosecute a president, the Constitution suggests, first he must be removed through impeachment. Then, it says, he shall be “subject to Indictment, trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to law.”

Why do Robert Mueller and the Democrats seem to be itching instead for an indictment? Well, Democratic leaders are signaling there’s not enough to impeach — yet. Maybe Congress just doesn’t have a taste for ham sandwiches.

This column first appeared in the New York Post.

NY Sun
NEW YORK SUN CONTRIBUTOR

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.


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