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dismisses the argument made most aggressively by Harvard law
professor Alan Dershowitz—who offers frequent legal advice to the
President both in person and via television—and repeated recently by
the President, and in the recently revealed letter sent by his lawyers to
the Special Counsel in January, that a president cannot be prosecuted
for exercising his constitutional prerogatives, even if they foster crimes.
Again, the team argues that there is no statute or constitutional
authority that puts the President above the law or that allows him to
contribute to breaking the law.
Curiously, the tradition breakers in the White House—supported
by a many lawyers, both right and left leaning—now argue that the
President's traditional and constitutionally mandated executive powers
give him wide latitude for how he carries out his duties. "I don't think
you are going to find a court who will not see the president's role as
unique," said one White House advisor. "The Mueller theories are
wishful thinking."
Such an indictment is described in similar ways by both Mueller
and White House insiders: it puts the President's public behavior on
trial. The nature of that behavior, for the Mueller team, is corrupt; this,
according to the White House, is how voters elected the President to
behave.
The Mueller team may have a high hurdle in convincing
Rosenstein to approve the indictment. Giuliani recently put standing
DOJ policy against the indictment of a president in hyperbolic terms: the
President could kill James Comey if he wanted to without fear of
prosecution. But, according to one former senior DOJ lawyer, Rosenstein
in this circumstance may have the power to override the DOJ guidelines.
The Mueller team appears to believe that Rosenstein's pledge before
congress that, absent malfeasance, he will support the Special Counsel's
independence with regard to the Russian investigation, means he will
let the indictment go forward. In one view—and in the suspicion of
some in the White House—he may have already authorized Mueller to
proceed with the indictment.
The counsel's office does, however, according to the papers I have
reviewed, worry about the possibility that Trump will replace
Rosenstein with someone who will fire Mueller or curtail the
investigation. Indeed, the Mueller investigation seems concerned or
shadowed by daily procedural questions of an existential nature—
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