federal government internally will use, right? so you are saying the executive branch. the executive branch, sorry. even though with mueller, nobody it was just a memo, and he said doj policy, and here this idea of testimonial immunity, garland might think doj policy. right. so what you are saying is that if that is the thing that is holding them back on meadows, then we have an interesting task case here. you think that navarro, it does not clear the bar, and then we should see them move forward in the way that they did with bannon. scavino might be a tighter call. there is also, i want to throw one thing out there as well, which is again, i don t know what they are thinking. but look across the street at the court, right? it is a six ring court. you i would be worried about making bylaw, right? if you tee things up to the 63 court in terms of
senior level advisers. he is like a caddie who showed up, and is a fetcher for donald trump on the one hand. not very senior. on the other, he has got this kind of title, deputy chief of staff. so, how will that play out? it is not clear from the olc memos, which already are themselves discredited in the courts. but maybe giving the department fix. how do you like that? so the office of legal councils is weirdly kind of like the supreme court within the federal government, right? they issued these rulings, they kind of hold the law that the federal government internally will use, right? so you are saying the executive branch. the executive branch, sorry. even though with mueller, nobody it was just a memo, and he said doj policy, and here this idea of testimonial immunity, garland might think doj policy. right.
policy. there is no d.o.j. policy that says you won t investigate if donald trump announces he s a presidential candidate. they are absolutely free to investigate. and indeed, no one is above the law. there is no principle that is more sacred to the justice department, at least in normal times, than that. you know, it is one of those news cycles in which we need new the next hour. we will see you in a little bit. thank you, my friend. after the break, how and why some of our most vulnerable found themselves caught up and susceptible to lies and disinformation. one year after the attack on the capitol, a reflection on the state and strength of extremism, and what it s going to take to contain and it fight back against it. we will be right back. we will be right back.
penalties associated with breaking our laws are well-known. beyond that, we have to put guardrails in place to prevent this from happening again. starts with doj policy, then goes to firing prosecutors who actually thought it was okay to issue these secret subpoenas against members of congress, and then third, it might require legislative reforms that prevent any future administration from doing the same, because you know, any assumption that only people of integrity would be present or running the doj unfortunately have been proven to be wrong. i want to ask you, the new york times op-ed on the filibuster, there is a half measure available manchin could consider as an alternative to abolition, weakening the filibuster taking the threshold to 55 votes instead of 60,
Many legal scholars myself included anticipated a self-pardon and feared the havoc it would wreak on constitutional accountability (others aren’t ruling out the possibility that he secretly self-pardoned). Given the longstanding yet legally fraught Department of Justice (DOJ) policy against indicting sitting presidents, a Trump self-pardon could have greenlighted federal crimes in the Oval Office with impunity. Ultimately, Trump decided not to manipulate the pardon power that way. Whether intentional or not, his forbearance was a gift to the Constitution.
In a possible nod to pragmatism, former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and former Attorney General Bill Bar are said to have warned Trump not to pardon himself. Article II’s pardon clause is brief, affording the president “Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of impeachment.” A presidential pardon has no bearing on impeachment convictions and it cannot touch sta