Trump, lawyers lay out expansive presidential powers view
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump claimed Monday he has an “absolute right” to pardon himself, part of an extraordinarily expansive vision of executive authority that is mostly untested in court and could portend a drawn-out fight with the prosecutors now investigating him.
No need of a pardon anyway, Trump tweeted, because “I have done nothing wrong.” In fact, his lawyers assert in a memo to special counsel Robert Mueller, it’s impossible for him to have done anything wrong in the area of obstructing justice, an issue Mueller has been investigating. That’s because, as the country’s chief law enforcement officer, Trump himself has ultimate control of the Justice Department and executive branch.
Beyond that, his lawyers have repeatedly insisted that it’s beyond dispute that a sitting president cannot be criminally prosecuted.
Trump also tweeted Monday that the Justice Department’s “appointment of the Special Counsel is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL.”
Mueller’s investigation moves forward nonetheless, and as it does courts may have to confront questions with minimal if any historical precedent. Those include whether a president can be forced to answer questions from prosecutors, whether it’s possible for a commander in chief to criminally interfere in investigations and whether a president’s broad pardon power can be deployed for corrupt purposes.
“There’s a reason they’re untested. It’s because they were unthinkable,” said Savannah Law School professor Andrew Wright, who served in the White House counsel’s office under President Barack Obama. “The president’s game here in part is to take issues that are so beyond the pale that they have never been tested and say, ‘Look, there’s no authority here on point.”’
Mueller is investigating whether Trump associates coordinated with Russia during the 2016 presidential election and whether Trump took steps to shut down that investigation through actions including the firing of FBI Director James Comey.
Though Trump insists he did nothing wrong, the statements from him and his lawyers, including the just-disclosed January memo to Mueller, make clear that much of their defense revolves around establishing that he was constitutionally empowered to take the actions he took.