My thinking is that if charges are pursued after he’s out of office, then the statute of limitations will, in fact, be paused (“tolled”) for the time he’s immune to prosecution.
But there are other schools of thought, and it’s ultimately a question which will have to be settled by the courts.
A quick google suggest that the term for this is “tolling” and the only such extension is for physically being outside of the jurisdiction. There is no general rule that if, for whatever reason, you can’t be charged that you’re safe. There is only the very specific one that you either are or are not within the jurisdictional territory of the crime.
Actually, I take that back. The case might be less clear:
It sounds like the crime would need to be pretty significant. Obstruction of Justice - particularly for obstructing a crime that didn’t occur - would be unlikely to get through the first layer of judges.
It’s adorable that you think moderate Republicans are a thing.
That might be correct if he was, in fact, *legally *immune from prosecution. But there is no statutory or Constitutional requirement providing for that; it’s only a matter of DOJ policy.
Isn’t *attempted *obstruction also a crime, though? In the court of public (and Congressional) political opinion, is it any less damning of President Individual-1 that he couldn’t get his own staff to follow his orders that they obstruct, and that he didn’t follow up to make sure it happened? Ah, blessed vindication! :rolleyes:
I’m still attempting to wrap my head around how the leader of the Republican party is simultaneously praising a damning report as exonerating him while attacking the authors of the report and the report itself as biased, who two weeks ago he was calling honorable and somehow this party still supports him.
But there are spots where he is obstructing on crimes that DID occur (cohen, manafort, etc) -
It’s an Alice in Wonderland world, we live in, Fiver.[ul]
[li]“And what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?”[/li][li]“But it’s no use now,” thought poor Alice, “to pretend to be two people! Why, there’s hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!”[/li][li]“I wish I hadn’t cried so much!” said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. “I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That will be a queer thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer to-day.”[/li][li]“Speak English!” said the Eaglet. “I don’t know the meaning of half those long words, and, what’s more, I don’t believe you do either!”[/li][li]“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked. “Oh, you ca’n’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” “How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice. “You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”[/li][li]“Really, now you ask me,” said Alice, very much confused, “I don’t think—” “Then you shouldn’t talk,” said the Hatter.[/li][li]“No, no!” said the Queen. “Sentence first—verdict afterwards.”[/li][li]“If you didn’t sign it,” said the King, “that only makes the matter worse. You must have meant some mischief, or else you’d have signed your name like an honest man.”[/li][/ul]
That’s certainly one of the arguments against tolling the SoL–if the president was never actually immune from prosecution, then there’s no reason to toll.
On the other hand, if the prosecutors refused to prosecute on the claim that the president is immune, then it’s in the interests of justice to toll that time.
I also happen to think that moderate Republicans still exist. However, they seem to have all lost their vocal cords, or maybe their spines, or their balls.
of course they do. It may only be 25% of the party but they are around. I know a few.
Here’s some Trump camp “insight” on the report from Giuliani earlier today on Jake Tapper:
Rudy Giuliani: Nothing wrong with taking info from Russians
Watch at your own risk.
Still a bunch of whataboutism directed at everyone else but Trump. The report is so unfair and was written by Trump-hating Democrat hacks but totally exonerates Trump. Mueller may not have read his own report carefully enough before he signed his name to it. McGahn is “confused” because he told his story three different ways and Trump never actually ordered him to fire Mueller and since Mueller wasn’t fired means Trump didn’t order his firing or something to that effect (the clip cuts off at this point). Mitt Romney is a hypocrite. Obama should be investigated for some connection to the Steele dossier. We need to investigate the investigators.
And, of course, “There’s nothing wrong with taking information from Russians”. It’s not illegal.
On Meet The Press he was gibbering about the idea that if the information was true, hey, what’s the problem?
With Trump, every guy under him gets more confused than a homeless man under house arrest…
I can’t believe I forgot this: Manafort was basically tortured by Mueller’s team and Andrew Weissmann (a Mueller prosecutor) is a “hitman”, whatever that means in Rudy’s mind.
Name one.
Larry Hogan
Bah. I disagree. If Bernie gets the Dem nomination, Trump will probably win. We will have 4 more years of the country going into the toilet.
You’re willing to just let Trump be a lame duck instead of doing the things that desperately need to be done? WTF?
I like some of Bernie’s ideas, but we certainly aren’t ready for them. He has no plan, only ideas.
We must first get rid of the racist, bigoted morons that support the likes of Trump and Mitch. I don’t care if they die off or are imprisoned for their attacks, treason, money laundering or obstruction of justice. Fuck 'em. They are morons that obviously will not look at facts. Once they crawl back under their rocks (we will never be rid of them) we can work on universal health care, infrastructure and education.
We can then deal with the gun issue (I’m a gun owner, and respect that something needs to be done)
Make no mistake, people that support Trump are easy to identify.
I don’t care any more. Fuck MY feelings? Well, good luck to you. I’ll no longer fight for you. The information and facts are right in front of you face.
I just watched the YouTube clip of Giulliani on Fox being interviewed by Chris Wallace. More deflection.
Rudy said firing Mueller couldn’t be obstruction because he would have just been replaced with another person in the position. I wonder if Barr was available?
Wallace also pointed out the hypocrisy of Trump in Sept 2016 talking about what a problem it was that Hillary during her email testimony stated many times she “couldn’t recall”.
Trump, who has one of the greatest memories of all-time according to himself, answered the same way many multiple times in his written response to Mueller.
When asked by Wallace why that is a problem for Clinton but not Trump, Rudy said: ~ “because Clinton was guilty of the underlying crime”. :rolleyes:
Looks like the Rudy interview gameplan is to ramble on and on about his own talking points until the interview times out.
I’m talking about voters, not the Congress