Good written up opinion piece.
Should we be able to indict a sitting president? Consider Spiro Agnew.
President Richard M. Nixon’s Watergate scandal was simultaneously exploding, and Nixon seemed to be imploding. If Watergate took down the president, it was imperative that Agnew be out of the line of succession. The urgency of the situation, and the imperative to avoid having a corrupt felon take over the presidency, gave Agnew enormous bargaining power. And he used it.
But the most significant impediment to holding a president accountable to justice is the statute of limitations. Generally, most federal crimes must be charged within five years or forever be barred. For crimes committed while the president is in office, there will be time enough at the end of the president’s term. But if a president engaged in financial crimes before taking office, or committed crimes to gain that office, the time for charging those crimes could well expire before his or her term concluded.
That is one of the reasons a grand jury should be permitted to indict a sitting president, as long as all further proceedings are postponed while he or she is in office. Unless an indictment could issue against a sitting president, there would be a perverse incentive for an alleged White House felon to seek reelection simply to avoid indictment while waiting for the statute of limitations to expire on crimes he had committed.The history of the Justice Department’s conflicting positions on this question does not categorically foreclose issuing an indictment against a sitting president.
Even where lawful, the use of the criminal process against sitting or former presidents should be undertaken with caution. In an ideal world, what our presidents and presidential candidates should most fear are voters, not prosecutors. But where the crimes are extremely serious and the proof compelling, the principle that no one is above the law may leave little choice but to proceed to court.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...=.b6dbca2fbbbe
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