direstraits posted:Naio posted:It's a joke because kavanaugh thinks presidents are above the law. Which is why trump picked him. Enjoy the show.
Proof old Batty accepts leftwing agitprop without researching what he posts.
Kavanaugh in this http://www.minnesotalawreview....1/Kavanaugh_MLR.pdf,
Kavanaugh stated Congress “consider a law exempting a President — while in office — from criminal prosecution and investigation.” He makes this proposal in the same law-review article, by the way, where he also suggests that Congress should assert greater authority over war powers, and he floats the idea of a single, six-year term for the president (an interesting idea, by the way.) He advocating that congress pass a law, not how a judge should decide the question. Pretty much in line with Madison in the Federalist Papers. Research, before posting.
https://www.politico.com/blogs...dent-indicted-709641
Kavanaugh's allies note that the 2009 Minnesota Law Review article he wrote addressing such subjects advocates for a congressional statute that would exempt the president from civil suits while in office, as well as immunizing him from criminal investigation and prosecution. He does use some pretty strong language about the prospect of a criminal trial of a sitting president, saying it would "cripple the federal government"—an assessment that one could imagine leading a Supreme Court justice to step in to avert such a prospect.
However, Kavanaugh's supporters observe that by backing a law to provide such immunity, he was implicitly accepting that it could not be found in the Constitution or existing law. Perhaps so, but it turns out Kavanaugh was asked directly about his view on the subject two decades ago and signaled his belief that a presidential indictment was beyond the pale.
During a 1998 Georgetown Law School conference on what would turn out to be the dim prospects of renewing the independent counsel law, moderator Mark Tuohey (who hired Kavanaugh onto the staff of independent counsel Ken Starr) put a question to the panel:
"How many of you believe, as a matter of law, that a sitting president cannot be indicted during the term of office?" Tuohey asked.
Kavanaugh's hand went up, as did more than half of the experts on the panel, including some with liberal political outlooks.
Kavanaugh's stance—or his stance at that time— is not an unusual or outlandish one. In fact, it's the official position of the Justice Department, formally articulated in a 1973 opinion under President Richard Nixon and reaffirmed in 2000 under President Bill Clinton. But it could be that there's less nuance to Kavanaugh's view than his supporters are suggesting.
Earlier in the panel discussion, helpfully preserved for eternity by C-SPAN, Kavanaugh refers to the issue as "a question that has been a lurking constitutional issue for a long time which at some point here should be resolved so we can determine whether the Congress or an independent counsel should investigate the president when his conduct is at issue."
"I tend to think it has to be the Congress," Kavanaugh added, presaging the views he would offer in more detail in his law review article a decade or so later. Democrats are expected to press Kavanaugh hard on the topic at his confirmation hearings, arguing that Trump picked him as a kind of insurance policy against potential negative developments in special counsel Robert Mueller's Trump-Russia probe.
Some scholars are of the view that a president could be indicted while in office, but could not be tried until he vacated the office, whether by impeachment, resignation or because his term expired. But the most recent Justice Department opinion, which is likely binding on Mueller's office, says that even a sealed indictment of the president would be impermissible.