Rick Fischer
Sep 2, 2018 · 2 min read

The author fails to explicitly address important factors.

Presidents can be subject to civil lawsuits, true, but those are self-correcting as far as harassing a president with trivial lawsuits. If the suit is trivial, the judgement will be small, and therefore the president need not be much bothered with the court proceedings. His lawyers can handle things.

Protections are needed to prevent a future president from being subject to the kind of perjury trap that was set for President Clinton and is being attempted by Mueller for President Trump. Manufacturing process crimes in this manner, if allowed, constitutes a serious threat to the nation’s governance. Casting about for any pretext to get a president into a room and under oath, hoping to hit the jackpot with a statement that can be construed as a lie, is an open invitation to constant political harassment of an unpopular president.

Presidents are too vulnerable to harassment and entrapment as long as political actors can subject presidents to subpoena and deposition. The greater interest of the nation should shield presidents from subpoenas and deposition. The potential for political misuse is too great. If a president is to be dragged into court, the evidence ought to be serious enough, complete enough, and convincing enough that it stands on its own and does not rely on the president’s own testimony against himself. And it should never be for a process crime manufactured by the investigators, as was done to Scooter Libby for example.

The problem with relying on the courts to balance the seriousness of a suit against the needs of the nation for governance fails when the president is unpopular with so many in the judiciary. It is too easy to find judges that hate Trump, for example, and those judges have proven too likely to tip the scales against the president. Just look at how many judges have been willing to rule against the President’s actions and have had the Supreme Court reverse them. Regrettably, we can’t rely on judges to strike the balance now that judge shopping and our politicized judiciary are commonplace.

The weapons and ammunition are being gathered and tested, first to bring down a hated candidate and now to bring down an elected president. All the weapons that prove effective and useful will forever be there for any faction to use against any future president. Do Democrats think they will somehow never be used against them?