George Conway: Trump is a cancer on the presidency. Congress should remove him. [View all]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-conway-trump-is-a-cancer-on-the-presidency-congress-should-remove-him/2019/04/18/e75a13d8-6220-11e9-bfad-36a7eb36cb60_story.html
George Conway: Trump is a cancer on the presidency. Congress should remove him.
By George T. Conway III
April 18 at 8:09 PM
So it turns out that, indeed, President Trump was not exonerated at all, and certainly not totally or completely, as he claimed. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III didnt reach a conclusion about whether Trump committed crimes of obstruction of justice in part because, while a sitting president, Trump cant be prosecuted under long-standing Justice Department directives, and in part because of difficult issues raised by the Presidents actions and intent. Those difficult issues involve, among other things, the potentially tricky interplay between the criminal obstruction laws and the presidents constitutional authority, and the difficulty in proving criminal intent beyond a reasonable doubt.
Still, the special counsels report is damning. Mueller couldnt say, with any confidence, that the president of the United States is not a criminal. He said, stunningly, that if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Mueller did not so state.
Thats especially damning because the ultimate issue shouldnt be and isnt whether the president committed a criminal act. As I wrote not long ago, Americans should expect far more than merely that their president not be provably a criminal. In fact, the Constitution demands it.
The Constitution commands the president to take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed. It requires him to affirm that he will faithfully execute the Office of President and to promise to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. And as a result, by taking the presidential oath of office, a president assumes the duty not simply to obey the laws, civil and criminal, that all citizens must obey, but also to be subjected to higher duties what some excellent recent legal scholarship has termed the fiduciary obligations of the president.