if you want to change it, change it. the president of the united states, pardoning himself would just be unthinkable. and it would lead to probably an immediate impeachment. okay. don t worry. won t happen. could happen. has a right for it to happen, but it won t happen. if that was the case, why did they let it go to begin with? it was followed up this morning by the president declaring, quote, i have the absolute right to pardon myself, but why would i do that when i ve done nothing wrong? he calls out the special counsel, saying, mueller s appointment is totally unconstitutional. sentiments the president s lawyers expressed in a lettero the special counsel s office earlier this year. is that me shouting out, i didn t rob a bank. crazy. why would you say it if you didn t do it? i ve missed walking over here to explain the little things. i missed you, a velshi. i missed you. let s talk about this.
department of justice, which appears to have led to the alleged russian collusion investigation. it is a turn, by the way, from legal language to language from the president s stump speeches and tweets, and likely to remind the special counsel for m trump s love of twitter and rallies to fire up supporters. going back to the legal arena, the president s lawyers put flatly, quote, as you know, under our system of government, the president is not readily available to be interviewed. continuing to assert the belief that a president cannot be subpoenaed. in case the mueller team is unclear on this point. the president s lawyers cite the documents and interviews of campaign staffers saying, quote, in light of the voluntary offerings, your office clearly lacks the requisite need to personally interview the president. why woneed to talk t him? you re talking to everybody else. you don t need a lawyer to
the president. whether the president can pardon himself or whether mueller can subpoena the president is through litigation, right, not through talking heads or a advocacy letters. the subpoena question, we come close toring it in ways. one, in the nixon case, in the early 70s, the supreme court said there is no executive privilege that would protect documents that have been subpoenaed from the president. many years later, in the clinton v jones case , the court said that a president is sugsceptibl to being deposed in a case. neither of those precisely answers the question, but it gives us insight into how a court may think about it. my guess is you can subpoena a president. the president must answer the questions of the grand jury. chuck, if you can, at this point, why doesn t bob mueller just do it? while there s complete silence on bob mueller s side while he s
six months. you have to wonder, at what point bob mueller says, enough of this negotiations. i m going to go ahead and th d obviously set off a huge showdown in court. rudy giuliani saying this weekend that they would fight that. they would take it as far as they could, up to the supreme court. it would be something that would extend the investigation. when we went out to try to get this document several weeks ago, what we thought was in the document were new facts about the case. the president s lawyers telling mueller new things about what the president knew or did or did not do, in terms of the investigation. when we got the document, it was about an intellectual underpinnings of why the president s lawyers think he was okay to do the things he did. it was an illuminating look at the president s view of his executive power. that is so important. the justice department is within the executive branch, and the president, within his authority, has a lot of control over it.
involuntarily. that s the fight they have been having behind closed doors for months now. and it is reaching a climax now, which is why this is so interesting to see this particular document at this moment in time because if bob mueller decides to go forward with the subpoena, therguments laid out in the memorandum are the arguments we will be seeing in court briefs that could very quickly become a pitched constitutional battle the supreme court would have to decide. glen, to charlie s point as his lawyers are arguing, the president cannot be subpoenaed and can put an end to any doj or fbi investigation at any time for any reason. do they base that on any prior law? i don t believe they do and i think the law that s most closely related to that issue actually cuts against them, the next on case, clinton v jones case, picking up on charlie s point, i see this letter as an attempt to persuade the public that the president shouldn t be made to sit for an interview.