In his testimony to Congress, following his investigation, Robert Mueller was asked by the Republican Representative Ken Buck: “Could you charge the president with a crime after he left the office?” Mueller replied: “Yes.” Buck continued: “You believe that he committed – you could charge the President of the United States with obstruction of justice after he left office?” Again, the response was “Yes.”
The Special Counsel’s report into whether Donald Trump was the Muscovian candidate for the White House concluded that Trump may have committed obstruction of justice on at least 10 occasions. But Mueller had decided that a 1973 Justice Department decision that a sitting president cannot be indicted meant that charging Trump with federal crime would be “unconstitutional”.
The 43-year-old ruling on presidential privilege has also protected Trump, to varying extents, from a number of investigations and lawsuits, including a year-long battle over his tax returns.
But with his impending departure from the White House, he is now quite vulnerable. He has lost the safety of office and the service of his loyal Attorney General, William Barr. Some prosecutors had become worried about taking on not only the former president but his friends. After the prison sentence of Trump’s friend Roger Stone was cut by Barr, they expressed private concern to the media that the Attorney General would not back them. That constraint has now gone.
Trump is the subject of 15 inquiries, criminal and civil, by nine federal, state and district agencies into his business and personal finances, including his tax affairs, his campaign, his inaugural committee, and charities associated with him.
Many of these are on track to go ahead separately. But because of the egregious nature and scale of Trump’s alleged offences, there have been calls for a special commission to examine the evidence. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat Congressman from California, said: “When we escape this Trump hell, America needs a Presidential Crime Commission. It should be made up of independent prosecutors who look at those who enabled a corrupt president; example one, sabotaging the mail to win an election.”
Ken Starr, the independent prosecutor who investigated Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky scandal, commented during the Mueller investigation that the Special Counsel would either recommend impeachment or that Trump would face indictment once he was out of office.
Starr was subsequently part of Trump’s defence team on Congressional impeachment hearings over his alleged attempts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into opening an investigation into the business activities of Joe Biden’s son Hunter. Trump was found guilty in the House of Representatives and won in the Republican-controlled Senate.
