Thread by @gtconway3d

I enjoyed the privilege of writing an epilogue for this great project. You can read it here:

justsecurity.org/65863/expert-s…

https://twitter.com/just_security/status/1163799624529977346

Some excerpts from that epilogue, which I hope will encourage you to read all the summaries:

“[T]he job of the President was to protect the nation. That meant allowing the investigation to proceed to its rightful conclusion, ... ”

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“... indeed supporting it, and letting the chips falling where they may. But Trump didn’t see it that way. From the outset, he looked at the investigation in terms of how it affected him personally, and not in terms of how it impacted the country.”

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“The President relentlessly attacked the investigation .... And he tried to sharply curtail it, and even kill it altogether. Repeatedly. [He] hated that it made it seem he hadn’t actually won the great election victory of which he liked to boast.”

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“[He] committed the crime of obstructing justice—multiple times. The report doesn’t specifically draw this conclusion, but it goes through the legal analysis ..., and the result, at least for several of the incidents the report describes, is clear.”

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“He ... acted corruptly. He wanted to impede and end an investigation for his own personal reasons, not for the benefit of the nation. Officials around him knew it, which is why they refused to do his bidding, and even grew so alarmed ...”

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“... they consulted personal counsel apparently for fear that Trump was potentially putting them into personal legal jeopardy. And Trump’s own behavior betrayed that even knew he was acting corruptly.”

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“Indeed, the report shows that Trump even obstructed justice about obstructing justice. When the media reported that he had asked his White House counsel to take steps to get rid of the Mueller, Trump tried to get the counsel to lie about it.”

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“Trump [also] tried to get the counsel to create a false document about it. ... [T]rying to get a witness to adopt a false story, or to create a false record, about a matter under investigation, constitutes classic obstruction. Trump brazenly did both.”

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“Yet, in the end, the ultimate importance of the Mueller report doesn’t stem from whether it shows specific elements of a particular subsection of the Criminal Code, even one prohibiting obstruction, have been satisfied.”

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“To be sure, for the President of the United States ... to commit a crime, and a federal crime at that, is awful. And for him to commit a crime that involves an attempt to pervert justice is absolutely reprehensible.”

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“But there is actually more at stake here, something far more fundamental. The people ...
have the right to expect far more of a president than merely that he not be provably a criminal. They have the right to expect ... what the Constitution demands.”

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“The Framers understood the presidency ... to be a fiduciary position, a position of trust. ...[T]he ‘original design’—the ‘vision of the framers’—was that the President “is supposed to act like a fiduciary.”

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“[Like] a trustee of a trust, ... a fiduciary must subordinate his interests to those of the beneficiaries he is called upon to serve. If he or she doesn’t do that, then on a sufficient showing, an appropriate authority ... could remove the trustee.”

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“In the case of a president, the trust is the nation’s federal government, and the beneficiaries are its people. The President is called upon to “pursue the public interest in a good faith republican fashion rather than pursuing his self-interest.”

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“The special counsel’s report shows Trump disregarded that duty—indeed, that he showed contempt for it almost whenever he could. Called upon to protect the nation against an attack from a foreign power, he acted principally to protect himself.”

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“Indeed, although it is not in the report, Trump, sitting beside the principal perpetrator of this attack just a few weeks ago [Vladimir Putin], effectively mocked his solemn duties to the nation before the world.”

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“The Framers laid out the standard by which the President’s compliance with his fiduciary obligations must be judged .... The standard is “high crimes and misdemeanors.” That term was not meant merely to incorporate the criminal statute books.”

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“It is a legal term of art, packing in centuries of ... history. At its core, ... ‘the phrase denotes breaches of fiduciary duties’ by public officials. And the Framers charged the Congress of the United States with enforcing that standard.”

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“If the Mueller report [shows] one thing, it is that ... Trump utterly failed to carry out his duties under the Constitution—that ...he shamelessly abjured them. It is time for members of Congress to do their duties and to hold the President to account.”

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If you haven’t had the chance to read the full Mueller report, or just want a refresher, please read this excellent set of short essays.

justsecurity.org/65863/expert-s…