{"id":26667,"date":"2017-12-04T14:59:31","date_gmt":"2017-12-04T14:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=26667"},"modified":"2017-12-04T14:59:31","modified_gmt":"2017-12-04T14:59:31","slug":"actually-potus-can-obstruct-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=26667","title":{"rendered":"Actually, POTUS can ‘obstruct justice’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I am not qualified to argue points of law with a lawyer, but I’ll take a brief moment to challenge a political point that Donald J. Trump’s lawyer has asserted about the president of the United States.<\/p>\n

John Dowd says that the president “cannot obstruct justice” because “he is the chief law enforcement officer under (the Constitution’s Article II) and has every right to express his view of any case.”<\/p>\n

I beg to differ. Dowd is old enough to remember Watergate and the trouble that President Nixon got into when he sought to obstruct justice in that investigation.<\/p>\n

Obstruction at issue<\/a><\/p>\n

Indeed, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s articles of impeachment against the president included an accusation of “obstruction of justice.” Nixon was toast at that point.<\/p>\n

He chose to resign the presidency rather than face certain impeachment in the House and virtually certain conviction in a Senate trial.<\/p>\n

So, can Donald Trump “obstruct justice” if the special counsel determines he did so by firing FBI director James Comey over that “Russia thing”?<\/p>\n

I believe he can.<\/p>\n\n

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I am not qualified to argue points of law with a lawyer, but I’ll take a brief moment to challenge a political point that Donald J. Trump’s lawyer has asserted about the president of the United States. John Dowd says that the president “cannot obstruct justice” because “he is the chief law enforcement officer under … Continue reading Actually, POTUS can ‘obstruct justice’<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,13],"tags":[1424,7146,3940,5206],"class_list":["post-26667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-news","category-national-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-obstruction-of-justice","tag-richard-nixon","tag-watergate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26669,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26667\/revisions\/26669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}