Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, says he thinks President Donald Trump could be indicted, despite Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani expressing otherwise.
Klamath Falls, OR— In another interview with NBC News, on Thursday, Giuliani revealed that the acknowledgment from Mueller's team that they do not plan to indict Trump came from Jim Quarles, a member of the special counsel team. Giuliani said that Quarles had informed Jay Sekulow, another member of Trump's personal legal team, that they are not looking to indict the president.
The special counsel's office has had no comment yet.
In response to an FOIA request from Charlie Savage of the New York Times, the National Archives have released a memo prepared by the staff of Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr arguing that a sitting president may constitutionally be indicted. The memo takes an opposing view from that of the Office of Legal Counsel, which has concluded that indictment of the president would be unconstitutional.
The memo prepared for Starr is available in the above link or click here.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, says he thinks President Donald Trump could be indicted, despite Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani expressing otherwise.
"The President is not above the law, and an indictment -- if that's the course that Robert Mueller chooses to go -- I believe would be upheld by the courts," Blumenthal said on CNN's "The Situation Room." Giuliani told CNN earlier Wednesday that Mueller's team informed Trump's legal team they had concluded they are not able to indict a sitting president.
"All they get to do is write a report," Giuliani said. "They can't indict. At least they acknowledged that to us after some battling, they acknowledged that to us."
Mueller is currently leading the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, which includes looking into any potential ties between Trump campaign associates and Moscow. Trump has repeatedly denied collusion.
Blumenthal told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that if the President were to be indicted, it could go to the United States Supreme Court.
"It's an issue that has never been resolved, and that way there is a Department of Justice opinion to the contrary," Blumenthal said. "I happen to think that he could be indicted even if the trial is postponed. "
This isn't the first time the issue has been questioned. Earlier this month, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the Mueller investigation, was asked about whether a sitting president could be indicted while speaking at an event.
"I'm not going to answer this in the context of any current matters, so you shouldn't draw any inference about it," Rosenstein previously said. "But the Department of Justice has in the past, when the issue arose, has opined that a sitting President cannot be indicted. There's been a lot of speculation in the media about this, I just don't have anything more to say about it."
Most legal experts have assumed Mueller would follow the Justice Department’s guidelines that bar such a prosecution. The two opinions, written in 1974 and in 2000, argue that a president must be immune from criminal prosecution from his executive branch while in office. If a president had to consider the possibility of criminal jeopardy, the opinions argue, he might be dangerously constrained in making decisions that are critical to his role as commander in chief.
The opinions were written by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel amid investigations into President Richard M. Nixon and President Bill Clinton.
The Constitution provides another remedy for wrongdoing, the opinions conclude: Congress can hold a president accountable with impeachment proceedings, if necessary.
Under special counsel regulations, Mueller is required to report his conclusions confidentially to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who has the authority to decide whether to release the information publicly.
Last month, The Post reported that Mueller had told Trump’s lawyers in March that he needed to interview the president to finalize a report about Trump’s actions while in office and potential obstruction of justice.
By James Garland of Tulelake News
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