Rep. Kathrine Clark (D-MA) said that House Democrats are going to pursue changing the law so that a sitting president can be indicted while in office.
Rev. Al Sharpton asked Rep. Clark on MSNBC, “Speaker Pelosi has said there needs to be laws also that deals with this whole policy of the justice department that you can’t indict a sitting president. Is there something that you think the congress will pursue since your caucus is the majority now in the House?”
Rep. Clark answered, “I think that we will. I think we all have read the Mueller report, and we saw that there were many, many pieces of evidence there and how this president allowed Russia to interfere with our 2016 election and then tried to obstruct that investigation. But the Department of Justice is saying, we can’t indict a sitting president. Nobody should be allowed to use the white house and the powers of the presidency as a monarchy and not as a duly elected president who takes an oath to faithfully execute our laws. We’ve not seen that from this president, and we have to make sure that we safeguard our constitution, our very democracy, from this president and any other president in the future who may try and put himself or herself above the law.”
Video:
House Democrats are going to pursue changing the law so that Trump can be indicted while in office. pic.twitter.com/iYr8GpoKOc
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) September 22, 2019
An indictment would be more effective than impeachment because we all know that in practical terms impeachment carries no punishment for Donald Trump. A criminal indictment would put the fear of God into Donald Trump and any other future president who might want to emulate Trump’s behavior in the future. If the goal is to both punish Trump while making sure that this sort of presidency never happens again, changing the law so that a sitting president can be indicted is the best option.
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Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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