No one is above the law, so why can’t US president be indicted?
As an expatriate American, I get increasingly annoyed by the assertion, made on CNN and confirmed by the recent testimony of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, that a sitting president of the United States cannot be indicted.
Why not?
The talking heads all parrot the line that nobody is above the law. But the assertion that a sitting US president cannot be indicted puts every sitting US president above the law.
“Well,” the talking heads will reply, “if you indict a sitting president, he will become so preoccupied with fighting his indictment that he won’t be able to focus properly on his job, and the country will suffer as a result”.
“Well,” I retort, “if my fellow countrymen were more discriminating in their choice of presidents, they would elect one with the psychological strength both to do his job and fight the indictment at the same time.” But even if he is not so blessed, there is a solution.
You suspend the president from office and install the vice president as interim president until the legal proceedings finish. If the suspended president is acquitted, you add to his term of office the time he spent under suspension. If he is convicted, you expel him from office and make the vice president’s interim presidency permanent.
If the self-proclaimed “greatest country on earth” cannot manage such a little thing, it deserves whatever disasters may befall it.
Yankee Doodle
