Politico – President Donald Trump’s admission that he was fuming over ongoing investigations into his campaign’s alleged ties to Russia when he fired FBI Director James Comey has touched off a legal debate about whether that move could be the basis for obstruction of justice charges against the president.
A prominent legal scholar often cited by Trump and his team, Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, argued this week that dismissing Comey could not be illegal because the president has the clear right under the Constitution to dismiss top executive branch appointees.
“Whatever one may think of the president’s decision to fire Comey as a matter of policy, there is no legitimate basis for concluding that the president engaged in a crime by exercising his statutory and constitutional authority to fire director Comey,” Dershowitz wrote in an op-ed published in the Washington Examiner.
“It should not be a crime for a public official, whether the president or anyone else, to exercise his or her statutory and constitutional authority to hire or fire another public official … It is dangerous and wrong to criminalize lawful behavior because it may have been motivated by evil thoughts,” Dershowitz argued.
Several other lawyers challenged that view, noting that acts like hiring someone may be perfectly legal under most circumstances but illegal if done to thwart an investigation or advance some other unlawful goal.
President Donald Trump took to Twitter to threaten the media and issue a warning to fired FBI Director James Comey.
“If he didn’t obstruct justice, [Trump] is walking right up to the line in an incredibly reckless way. He admitted that he was concerned about the Russia investigation. … Just because it is legal to fire Comey does not end the analysis,” said Peter Zeidenberg, a former federal prosecutor now with law firm Arent Fox. “It is legal to throw one’s own computer in the river. But if the reason you are throwing that computer in the river is because of damaging information that you have reason to know the government is seeking as part of a criminal investigation and you are trying to hide, you have an obstruction of justice case.”
