QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; You said the constitution forbids arresting a member of Congress on his way to the hill. I have never heard of that. Is this why you warn that trying to indict Trump is constitutionally risky?
Thank you for your education
HS
ANSWER: Yes. To Indict any president is really a risky adventure. This act can result in the complete nullification of the entire democratic process. It is known as the Speech or Debate Clause in the United States Constitution (Article I, Section 6, Clause 1). The clause states that members of both Houses of Congress
…shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their attendance at the Session of their Respective Houses, and in going to and from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.
Members of Congress cannot even be interrogated and delayed to prevent the business of Congress. The Founding Fathers understood that an opponent could bribe some police officer to charge them or even delay them to alter the vote on the floor of Congress. We are really playing with fire here. Any opponent could conjure up some allegation to question a president and then indict him simply because they do not like what he proposes. They could have done that to Obama and his land deal in Chicago that simply looked like corruption. There were plenty of people who disagreed with Obama and his healthcare reforms. Obama’s polls were the worst since 1945. NOBODY tried to string together something to justify interrogating him and then try to charge him someway with a felony or perjury to remove him from office to stop his agenda. We have crossed all lines here this time and adopted a scorched earth policy to get Trump out of office.
The only way to remove a President is by Impeachment. The Constitution specifies under USCS Const. Art. II, § 4:
“The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors”.
Any official must be charged by the House and then tried by the Senate. There is no other process that would actually specifically authorize Mueller to indict Trump. That is not to say that they would not try to do so to influence political elections. There just seems to be some desperate movement here to overthrow Trump even if it destroys the Constitution. Normally, the Senate would have to impeach him and remove him from office and then Trump could be liable to trial and punishment in the courts for civil and criminal charges. We are dealing with a very risky attempt for if Mueller indicted Trump, it would forever alter the structure of government and probably end any democratic process. We are talking about impeachment of Trump because there is a 19-year cycle and the last was Bill Clinton who was charged in December 1998 by the House and led to a trial in the Senate for the impeachment on two charges, one of perjury and obstruction of justice. These charges stemmed from a sexual harassment lawsuit filed against Clinton by Paula Jones. That is the precedent. Clinton was subsequently acquitted by the Senate on February 12, 1999. Therefore, 2018 is perfectly a 19-year cycle on the mark.
President Andrew Johnson found himself, like Trump, in direct confrontation with the Republican-dominated Congress who greatly opposed his Reconstruction program for the South after the Civil War. They called it the “Radical Reconstruction” by repeatedly overriding the president’s vetoes. Congress wanted to punish the south and grind them into the dirt much as the EU has been trying to do with Britain.
They could not remove Johnson from office but make any mistake about it, the calls to impeach Trump are because those who lost supporting Hillary just refuse to accept Trump regardless of what he does. (see Special Report on the Impeachment of Donald Trump)
This is the problem with the law. You can pass a law you cannot kill your spouse. You do and argue that you were never really married and are therefore innocent despite their death. Any attempt to indict Trump would be doing the same thing. It is the constitution forbid arresting a Congressman but it does not mention specifically a president. The Constitution is not a “collection of popular slogans. We are dealing with instruments of government.” Bridges v California, 314 US 252, 284 (1941). The Constitution is not to be interpreted as a means to an end to justify an immediate dislike for a President. It “is not the formulation of the merely personal views… ” Cooper v Arron, 358 US 1, 24 (1958).
We no longer appear to be a nation of laws. It seems we are degenerating into an angry mob and the danger is that such a twist of the law becomes precedent so any future president the opposition disagrees with can concoct a scheme to get rid of him. We then move into the danger of the collapse of Rome when leaders can be deposed at will. We are in danger of creating a really wild 2019 in the financial markets. Get ready. This is going to be really nuts. Proof of the Vertical Market of which I have warned about is just looking at the chart of the Venezuela share market. It has risen in proportion to the decline in the confidence of government reflected in the currency. We seem to be headed directly into a financial storm that few people will survive without understanding how markets even trade under such circumstances.
