I just had a discussion a while back regarding whether a sitting POTUS can be charged with crimes without first being impeached. The view set forth was that while a POTUS is in office they are immune from prosecution except by Congress through impeachment. If Congress finds him guilty in the impeachment process then the law enforcement system also deals with him, but without impeachment criminal justice prosecution has to wait until after he leaves office. And of course, as long as he is in office he can pardon anybody he wants so his partners in crime are off the hook too.
I think that is a recipe for disaster, and I cannot believe that the Founding Fathers would have put that system in place. I haven’t researched it thoroughly but my gut-level reaction is that this so defies the rule of law and accountability that the Founders insisted upon, that this understanding has to be a misinterpretation of the Constitution. Maybe they never envisioned a Congress and system as corrupt as ours is now, but having just gotten free of King George III, I suspect they knew it could easily become like this, if politicians are exempt from obeying the laws because nobody can ever do anything about their crimes anyway.
Thanks for elaborating. I agree. It doesn’t sound correct. Certainly in Obama’s case, since he’s not eligible in the first place, the question of impeachment versus indictment is also out there. Somewhere else, you compared the US to Egypt and Obama to Morsi. Right on. The personalities, methods, behaviors, and even the WORDS they speak and the rationalizations they offer are the same.