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Can the President obstruct justice?


Caecus
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Nixon says no. The US senate says yes. All Trump needs to do is tweet "I AM NOT A CROOK!"

It's a useful mental exercise. Through the years, many thinkers have been fascinated by it. But I don't enjoy playing. It was a game that was born during a brutal age when life counted for little. Everyone believed that some people were worth more than others. Kings. Pawns. I don't think that anyone is worth more than anyone else. Chess is just a game. Real people are not pieces. You can't assign more value to some of them and not others. Not to me. Not to anyone. People are not a thing that you can sacrifice. The lesson is, if anyone who looks on to the world as if it was a game of chess, deserves to lose.

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On 12/5/2017 at 6:11 PM, Caecus said:

Nixon says no. The US senate says yes. All Trump needs to do is tweet "I AM NOT A CROOK!"

Sort of. As head of the executive almost all federal agencies and regulatory stuff occurs under him. Like how Nixon kept firing AGs because they wouldn't do his flagrantly illegal stuff. But Congress can hit back at the President pretty hard, if they want to do so. Executive privilege can't be used on everything and once they receive something in Congress they can request more and/or begin impeachment proceedings with a special or independent prosecutor, where he absolutely can obstruct to worsen his situation.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Likely yes. Going by the definition of Obstruction of Justice from Cornell: 

"Obstruction of justice is defined in the omnibus clause of 18 U.S.C. § 1503, which provides that "whoever . . . . corruptly or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication, influences, obstructs, or impedes, or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice, shall be (guilty of an offense)." Persons are charged under this statute based on allegations that a defendant intended to intefere with an official proceeding, by doing things such as destroying evidence, or intefering with the duties of jurors or court officers.

A person obstructs justice when they have a specific intent to obstruct or interfere with a judicial proceeding. For a person to be convicted of obstructing justice, they must not only have the specific intent to obstruct the proceeding, but the person must know (1) that a proceeding was actually pending at the time; and (2) there must be a nexus between the defendant’s endeavor to obstruct justice and the proceeding, and the defendant must have knowledge of this nexus.

§ 1503 applies only to federal judicial proceedings. Under § 1505, however, a defendant can be convicted of obstruction of justice by obstructing a pending proceeding before Congress or a federal agency. A pending proceeding could include an informal investigation by an executive agency."

If the president does an action that fulfills all of this, then yes, he has Obstructed Justice, as last time I checked, the law still applies to the president.

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