Hate to do it but with Rudy's "clarification" on Comey I'm afraid it's time for a dreaded THREAD about obstruction of justice.
Giuliani's defense of Trump firing Comey is that "It is undisputed that the President's dismissal of former Director Comey...was clearly within his Article II power." Correct -- but that's the problem!!!!
The whole reason that Obstruction of Justice is such a big deal *when the president does it* is because presidents have so many lawful powers they can do in pursuit of unlawfully preventing justice from being done.
That's presumably why Republicans in 1998 dressed up a sex scandal not just as perjury, but as obstruction of justice. Their problem wasn't that obstruction didn't rise to the level of impeachable; it was that the evidence for a scheme to obstruct justice wasn't there.
Congress in 1974 made Obstruction of Justice Article I in the Nixon impeachment effort, presumably because it was seen as even more important than the Abuse of Power Article II.
And so we can look at the Nixon Obstruction article and see exactly why the "within his Article II power" reasoning is dead wrong.
Nixon for the most part was doing things he was authorized to do. He was just doing them in order to obstruct justice, not as part of the normal and lawful fulfillment of his official duties.
It's obvious in e.g. "9. endeavouring to cause prospective defendants, and individuals duly tried and convicted, to expect favoured treatment and consideration in return for their silence or false testimony, or rewarding individuals for their silence or false testimony."
Are presidents allowed to give favoured (!) treatment to individuals? Of course! Are they allowed for example to give pardons? Of course!
But when they do it as part of a scheme to stop an investigation: Nope.
But when they do it as part of a scheme to stop an investigation: Nope.
Similarly "4. interfering or endeavouring to interfere with the conduct of investigations by the ... Federal Bureau of Investigation...."
Yes, that was an impeachment count against Nixon. No Nixon supporter thought it was okay he did so because it was w/in his Article II powers.
Yes, that was an impeachment count against Nixon. No Nixon supporter thought it was okay he did so because it was w/in his Article II powers.
Count 6 is just "endeavouring to misuse the Central Intelligence Agency, an agency of the United States." Again: it's important he not *misuse* the CIA because he is authorized to *use* it -- a very dangerous grant of authority.
Nixon is also charged with payoffs of hush money (Count 5). Again this is all about intent. No one doubts that the president or his campaign can pay campaign workers, or even former campaign workers. But do it to silence them, and: Obstruction of Justice.
So: Obstruction of Justice is a core charge, a weighty charge, against a POTUS precisely because of his authority in the realm of executing the laws. And...
Otherwise lawful presidential actions are unlawful, corrupt, and impeachable if they are done with the intent of preventing the normal course of (see again count 4) DOJ, FBI, special prosecutors, and congressional committees.
Added point: Check out too count 8 -- charging Nixon with lying in public for the purpose of " deceiving the people of the United States" about the Watergate investigations.
And a reminder of the history: A bipartisan majority of House Judiciary voted in favor of Article I: All 21 Dems and 6 of 17 Republicans. But when the "smoking gun" tape emerged days later supplying additional evidence for the charges, virtually all support collapsed.
That's pretty strong support for the idea that no one disputed the idea that Nixon's actions were in fact Obstruction of Justice for which he should be removed from office; the question was whether he was in fact guilty as charged.
OK that's all.
Ah to clarify: The "smoking gun" tape proved that Nixon ordered his CoS to instruct the CIA to tell the FBI to back off the Watergate investigation because of (bogus) national security concerns.
Again: Perfectly legal if there really were national security concerns! It was obvious (to everyone in 1974) Obstruction of Justice precisely because the national security concerns were a false cover story and the real intent was to stop a lawful investigation.
