Franklin, Andrews, Kramer & Edelstein

[scion]

Can the President Be Indicted? A Long-Hidden Legal Memo Says Yes

By CHARLIE SAVAGE JULY 22, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/22/us/politics/can-president-be-indicted-kenneth-starr-memo.html?smid=tw-share

WASHINGTON — A newfound memo from Kenneth W. Starr’s independent counsel investigation into President Bill Clinton sheds fresh light on a constitutional puzzle that is taking on mounting significance amid the Trump-Russia inquiry: Can a sitting president be indicted?

The 56-page memo, locked in the National Archives for nearly two decades and obtained by The New York Times under the Freedom of Information Act, amounts to the most thorough government-commissioned analysis rejecting a generally held view that presidents are immune from prosecution while in office.

“It is proper, constitutional, and legal for a federal grand jury to indict a sitting president for serious criminal acts that are not part of, and are contrary to, the president’s official duties,” the Starr office memo concludes. “In this country, no one, even President Clinton, is above the law.”

Mr. Starr assigned Ronald Rotunda, a prominent conservative professor of constitutional law and ethics whom Mr. Starr hired as a consultant on his legal team, to write the memo in spring 1998 after deputies advised him that they had gathered enough evidence to ask a grand jury to indict Mr. Clinton, the memo shows.

Other prosecutors working for Mr. Starr developed a draft indictment of Mr. Clinton, which The Times has also requested be made public. The National Archives has not processed that file to determine whether it is exempt from disclosure under grand-jury secrecy rules.

DOCUMENT
Newly Disclosed Clinton-era Memo Says Presidents Can Be Indicted
Can presidents be indicted while they remain in office? Conventional wisdom says no, but a newfound Office of Independent Counsel legal memo says yes.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/22/us/document-Savage-NYT-FOIA-Starr-memo-presidential.html

Savage-NYT-FOIA-Starr memo presidential indictability
Original Document (PDF) »
Contributed by: Charles Savage, The New York Times
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3899216/Savage-NYT-FOIA-Starr-memo-presidential.pdf
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/22/us/politics/can-president-be-indicted-kenneth-starr-memo.html?smid=tw-share