office, we d be an outlier. consider israel, where prime minister benjamin netanyahu is preparing for a preindictment hearing in the early fall. why? because israel has no prohibition against indicting a sitting prime minister. plus, the idea that a sitting president would be incapacitated by facing trial in office that s belied by president trump himself. while he currently faces no charges and hence no trial, according to time he s nevertheless the subject of more than a dozen other investigations and lawsuits looking into him, his businesses, his family and his associates. that doesn t seem to have interrupted his ability to function. as a matter of fact, he seems to thrive on it. bringing accountability to this process is not a republican, not a democratic idea, it s just the right thing to do. joining me now is neil kinkof, he worked in the office of legal counsel from 1993 to 1997. he testified against william
untruthfully, but continue to say no obstruction, no collusion. and those of us who read the report and the facts in the report see that that s just a lie. professor, thanks for your time, and expertise, we appreciate it. my pleasure. let s check in on your tweets and facebook comments. what do we have, katherine, from twitter, i think. anyone who still can t see trump is unfit for office is either uninformed or unfit as a human being. c.mao, the standard is high crimes and misdemeanors, unfitness is subjective, and i think it gets resolved in the next election what people think, not in an impeachment process but we ll see. look, the pitch i m making here is simply this. do we want to have a standard where a sitting president cannot be indicted while in office, and if that s the case, then congress ought to make it the law because this is not a settled issue among legal scholars. i don t consider myself one, but
unconstitutional about that but the theory of the olc memo is that it is unconstitutional. so i think mueller could have. i understand why he didn t. i think at this point, though, it s very much incumbent upon congress to take up that question, and i think in addition to the fairness point, mueller placed a lot of weight on not wanting to preempt congress s process, and that process is supposed to be informed by judgment made by politically accountable actors. and mueller is not that. but in mueller s effort to play it down the middle, i think he left this war shack test that we saw unfold this week that people were reading into his nine or so minute presser whatever they wanted to, and i don t think that it moved the needle either way as a result. you get the final word. okay. i completely agree with you. i think he has left us in a position where supporters of the president continue to say
impeachment. which i should add is the theory of the olc memos from dixon in 73 and from randy moss in 2000. the problem that i have with mueller s approach, by the way, i regard him as a patriot, i appreciate the way in which he undertook this task, i think he went a step too far with this fairness notion because he seems to have teed it up for the congress without reaching a conclusion and i agree with bill barr, that there was nothing that precluded mueller from reaching a conclusion on obstruction, not to bring an indictment but to reach a conclusion and provide additional guidance to the congress. do you agree with that? i agree with you that he could have, but the theory of the olc memo is that to indict a sitting president puts a cloud over the office. for a special counsel to say that the president committed obstruction of justice would put a cloud over the office. i don t think there s anything
of and are contrary to the president s official duties. in this country, no one, even president clinton is above the law. okay. enter robert mueller. mueller abided by the olc policy and its logic. his report said this, quote, a federal criminal accusation against a sitting president would place burdens on the president s capacity to govern. he chose not to render a conclusion on obstruction of justice overlooking that a special counsel is to provide the attorney general with a report quote explaining the prosecution or declination decisions the special counsel reached. well he didn t do that. mueller went one step further. mueller claimed it would be unfair to establish a criminal case against a president in office where there would be no trial where the president could seek exoneration. that s why he made no finding on obstruction of justice. the report it said this, quote