Would it be at all conceivable that a sitting President of the United States is arrested by law enforcement officers at the White House and then forced to appear before a judge in handcuffs?
I am, of course, drawing a parallel to the infamous case of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich:
Let’s assume the President is accused of a similar crime (i. e. selling off a prestigious office to the highest bidder). Would the legal course of action be somewhat like in the drama surrounding Blagojevich?
In such a case, the President would be impeached and removed from office, if he didn’t resign first. Once he was out of office, he might conceivably be arrested on criminal charges, but might not be, too: Nixon wasn’t.
Judges have required Presidential testimony before, but they’ve never had to use force. Sitting presidents just go testify, doing otherwise isn’t presidential.
Or they politely decline to testify, and suggest that everybody else can just go take a walk. That can be presidential if done right.
In the hypothetical case of somebody blatantly abusing the office, I think impeachment would happen semi-immediately.
And at that point, the perp would be subject to arrest like anybody else. Probably would be released on own reconizance rather than held, he’d still be a hassle as a prisoner.
The OP is forgetting the Presidential pardon. It would be political suicide but if the alternative is handcuffs then what would the President have to lose? Issue a pardon for himself, then resign.
This would only work once. Congress would immediately attempt to limit future President’s pardon powers. Then the Supreme Court would have the final say.
The President can only pardon federal crimes, so if he committed a state crime he couldn’t pardon himself. Of course I don’t know if he can pardon himself in any case.
This honestly isn’t an easily answerable question. Rod Blagojevich was arrested by Federal agents, as part of the Federal executive Rod had no special power over them.
However, the President is the Head of State. There is not technically any Federal law enforcement officer that can actually lay hands on him if he orders them not to do so. The military likewise cannot legally act against him. Any Federal officer attempting to arrest him would be derelict in his duties, and the President’s many, many Federal agents who protect him 24/7 would almost certainly use force to stop any rogue Federal officer attempting to affect an arrest.
State law enforcement officers would have several things preventing them from effecting an arrest of the President. It is of legal constitutionality for sure, and practically there is no way the Sheriff of some Texas hill county is going to get within a hundred yards of the President with an arrest warrant.
In fact, as a matter of history when the courts have in fact ruled that a President does something, and the President has refused to comply–nothing happened. The courts lack authority and ability to actually enforce their rulings.
The Presidency is a very powerful office, and the only true check that we know for sure would work against such rogue behavior would be impeachment–as once impeached he is not legally President. That’s most likely what would happen if a President refused to comply with court orders or ran around committing various crimes and using his office to protect himself from prosecution. Most likely the only reason Nixon released the tapes after the court ruling is because he knew he was basically getting impeached if he didn’t. He also recognized shortly thereafter he was getting impeached either way if he didn’t resign, so he resigned.
But I would have assumed that the clause about impeachment refers to third persons (for instance Federal judges who can also be impeached by Congress, the Framers of the Constitution probably thought that the President ought not to be able to override these), but not to the President himself.
The Office of Legal Counsel has written on the subject in 2000 as a follow up to an analysis done in 1973 related to Spiro Agnew. Essentially it determines that the president is immune from indictment and criminal prosecution.
In that case Spiro Agnew was attempting to enjoin a grand jury investigation claiming that it wasn’t allowed against a sitting Vice President. The Solicitor General (Robert Bork) argued that while the president was so protected, it did not extend to the vice president.
Analysis seems to be (I didn’t read it all yet) that since a criminal prosecution would require the president’s full attention it would interfere with his constitutionally required duties.
So before someone could walk into the White House and arrest him, he’d have to be removed from that position first (obviously by impeachment, but I also wonder if the Vice President could use the 25th Amendment to oust him) avoiding the impeachment process (though not avoiding Congress).
Read farther. The 25th Amendment is discussed in one of the footnotes.
But in the reverse consideration, did the 25th Amendment break the immunity by creating a process by which a president otherwise bogged down in a prosecution could be declared unable to perform his duties and thus move power to the Vice President (and if resolved in the Presidents power he can be put back) but that was dismissed:
Another footnote points out that the 25th Amendment places no definition on what constitutes unable and the debate preceding passage indicated that was intentional to allow for unexpected events. So presumably it is theoretically possible for the President and the Cabinet to decide the president is so mired in controversy that they’ll remove him.
Common sense. The idea that somebody should be entitled to pardon himself seems crazy. Maybe an ancient Persian King, but not an elected politician in a modern society governed by the rule of law.
When has being crazy been a bar to something being legal?
There was a lot of talk about whether a president could pardon himself when Nixon was having his troubles and then again when Clinton was impeached.
In both cases it was news when both publicly decided they would not pursue that action (in Nixon’s case because he felt it would guarantee impeachment so he resigned and then was pardoned).
There’s nothing explicit in the Constitution that limits the presidential pardon power so as to exclude himself (there there is general agreement on the it being limited to federal crimes so if he murdered someone that wouldn’t help).
So the only way to get an answer would be for the sitting president to commit a crime (or be willing to pardon himself for a crime while claiming he didn’t commit it) and then pardon himself. Then for a prosecutor to risk professional suicide to charge him anyway so that the courts could review.
And legal experts seem to disagree on how that would likely play out (deference to the executive to define pardon power absent specific limits vs. appeals to common sense avoidance of paradoxes).
While it is possible, certain criteria must be followed, as quoting from Clinton v. Jones;
fn 39.
Of course, it does not follow that a court may " ‘proceed against the president as against an ordinary individual,’ " United States v. Nixon, 418 U. S., at 715 (quoting United States v. Burr, 25 F. Cas. 30, 192 (No. 14,692d) (CC Va. 1807)). Special caution is appropriate if the materials or testimony sought by the court relate to a President’s official activities, with respect to which “[t]he interest in preserving confidentiality is weighty indeed and entitled to great respect.” 418 U. S., at 712. We have made clear that in a criminal case the powerful interest in the “fair administration of criminal justice” requires that the evidence be given under appropriate circumstances lest the “very integrity of the judicial system” be eroded. Id., at 709, 711-712.
see also fn 23;