David Rivkin, Constitutional Attorney and Media Commentator

Trump has the Constitution on his side

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey

June 12, 2018 in the Washington Post

The Constitution vests all executive power in the president. He has the authority to determine what matters will, and will not, be investigated and prosecuted by the U.S. government. This is also a core part of the president’s obligation to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” — and it remains so even if done through an unorthodox channel such as Twitter.

So it is puzzling to see so much criticism of President Trump’s demand that the Justice Department investigate allegations about his presidential campaign being improperly subjected to an FBI counterintelligence probe. Same goes for his instruction to the Justice Department and the FBI that they should grant congressional requests for information about that matter.

Indeed, Trump would have been well within his authority, and well within precedent, to order an investigation entirely independent of the Justice Department and the FBI, as President Lyndon B. Johnson did when he created, by executive order, the Warren Commission to investigate the circumstances of President John F. Kennedy’s death.

When critics claim that a president cannot direct federal law-enforcement activities, they are implying that subordinate executive-branch officials can both judge and act upon their own assessment of a president’s motivations. There is no basis in the Constitution’s language, statute or Supreme Court precedent for such a notion. Those who object to a president’s instructions may resign, but they cannot usurp executive authority and defy him.

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June 13, 2018
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What’s at Stake in the Attack on Haspel

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey

Gina Haspel reportedly offered last week to withdraw her nomination as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The White House declined and now must stand behind her as she faces an unjustified assault involving the Bush administration’s enhanced-interrogation program.

Shortly after 9/11, the administration concluded that it needed to obtain as much actionable intelligence as possible to avert future attacks. It decided to explore, and ultimately adopted, the use of interrogation methods against some al Qaeda operatives far more rigorous than would have been permissible against lawful prisoners of war.

The administration was properly mindful of U.S. statutes and obligations under the United Nations Convention Against Torture. Even unlawful enemy combatants may not be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment. Where to draw the line? It was not for the CIA, much less Ms. Haspel, to answer that question, but for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which advises federal agencies on the law.

OLC’s guidance, in the form of several memos issued in 2002 and 2003, was communicated through the CIA’s general counsel to agents in the field and was the basis on which the enhanced-interrogation program was carried out. The guidance was precise and unambiguous. It listed all the legally permissible interrogation techniques, backed up by appropriate safeguards. The details of this program were fully and repeatedly briefed to the so-called congressional Gang of Eight—the House and Senate majority and minority leaders and chairmen and ranking members of the intelligence committees. None raised a word of objection.

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May 10, 2018
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FISA Abuses Are a Special Threat to Privacy and Due Process

By  David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey

Feb. 26, 2018, in the Wall Street Journal

The House Democratic surveillance memo is out, and it should worry Americans who care about privacy and due process. The memo defends the conduct of the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation in obtaining a series of warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to wiretap former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

The Democrats argue that Christopher Steele, the British former spy who compiled the Trump “dossier” on which the government’s initial warrant application was grounded, was credible. They also claim the FISA court had the information it needed about the dossier’s provenance. And they do not dispute former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s acknowledgment that the FBI would not have sought a FISA order without the Steele dossier.

The most troubling issue is that the surveillance orders were obtained by withholding critical information about Mr. Steele from the FISA court. The court was not informed that Mr. Steele was personally opposed to Mr. Trump’s election, that his efforts were funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, or that he was the source of media reports that the FBI said corroborated his dossier. These facts are essential to any judicial assessment of Mr. Steele’s veracity and the applications’ merits.

The FBI should have been especially wary of privately produced Russia-related dossiers. As the Washington Post and CNN reported in May 2017, Russian disinformation about Mrs. Clinton and Attorney General Loretta Lynch evidently prompted former FBI Director James Comey to announce publicly the close of the investigation of the Clinton email server, for fear that the disinformation might be released and undermine the bureau’s credibility. Read more »

February 27, 2018
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The Judicial ‘Resistance’ Is Futile

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey

The U.S. Supreme Court does not act in haste, so the justices raised some eyebrows last month when they took only two weeks to agree to hear the government’s appeal of an immigration case. Normally it would have taken several months, and a ruling might not have come until 2019. Instead the court is expected to issue a decision in Trump v. Hawaii by the end of the current term, in June.

Why the rush? Because lower-court judges have been playing an extraordinary cat-and-mouse game with the Supreme Court over President Trump’s three executive orders limiting immigration from several terror-prone countries. Over the past year, numerous trial and appellate courts have enjoined those orders, only to have the high court stay their decisions.

The lower-court judges have defied precedent by holding that the president has neither constitutional nor statutory authority to issue these orders. They have improperly questioned Mr. Trump’s motives, even analyzing his campaign statements for evidence of bad intent. And they have responded to each reversal from the high court by spinning new theories to strike down the orders. The judges appear to have joined the “resistance,” and it wouldn’t be surprising if the justices concluded enough is enough.

The case the court will now review is the handiwork of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which engaged in an analysis that ignored key precedents and misapplied accepted canons of statutory interpretation. Read more »

February 7, 2018
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The Zero That Makes Mulvaney a Hero

By Democrats’ design, the CFPB director has vast power. He can use it to shrink the bureau.

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Andrew M. Grossman

Richard Cordray asked Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen for $217 million in October—his last such request as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Last week Mr. Cordray’s acting successor, Mick Mulvaney, made his first quarterly funding request: “$0.” What a difference a few months make.

Established in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis according to now-Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s vision, the CFPB ran wild under Mr. Cordray’s leadership—issuing reams of punishing regulations and conducting endless fishing expeditions, sometimes into industries Congress had specifically excluded from its jurisdiction.

This was possible because the bureau was designed to be insulated from accountability. It is led by a single director, whom the president cannot fire except for cause, and funded by the Fed, so that it need not justify its actions and funding needs to Congress.

Whether this arrangement is constitutional is an open question, currently pending in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. But for now, as that court’s Judge Brett Kavanaugh has observed, it renders the CFPB director “the single most powerful official in the entire United States Government” (with the possible exception of the president). Read more »

January 23, 2018
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Can a President Obstruct Justice?

Yes, but not by doing any of the things we know Trump to have done.

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey

Dec. 10, 2017, in the Wall Street Journal

Speculation about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has turned toward obstruction of justice—specifically, whether President Trump can be criminally prosecuted for firing James Comey as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or for earlier asking Mr. Comey to go easy on onetime national security adviser Mike Flynn. The answer is no. The Constitution forbids Congress to criminalize such conduct by a president, and applying existing statutes in such a manner would violate the separation of powers.

The Constitution creates three coequal branches of government, and no branch may exercise its authority in a manner that would negate or fundamentally undercut the power of another. The power to appoint and remove high-level executive-branch officers, such as the FBI director, is a core aspect of the president’s executive authority. It is the principal means by which a president disciplines the exercise of the executive power the Constitution vests in him.

The same is true of Mr. Trump’s request, as purported by Mr. Comey: “I hope you can see your way clear . . . to letting Flynn go.” The FBI director wields core presidential powers when conducting an investigation, and the president is entirely within his rights to inquire about, and to direct, such investigations. The director is free to ignore the president’s inquiries or directions and risk dismissal, or to resign if he believes the president is wrong. Such officials serve at the president’s pleasure and have no right to be free of such dilemmas.

A law criminalizing the president’s removal of an officer for a nefarious motive, or the application of a general law in that way, would be unconstitutional even if the president’s action interferes with a criminal investigation. Such a constraint would subject every exercise of presidential discretion to congressional sanction and judicial review. That would vitiate the executive branch’s coequal status and, when combined with Congress’s impeachment power, establish legislative supremacy—a result the Framers particularly feared.

Mr. Trump’s critics claim that subjecting the president’s actions to scrutiny as potential obstructions of justice is simply a matter of asking judges to do what they do every day in other contexts—determine the purpose or intent behind an action. That is also wrong. The president is not only an individual, but head of the executive branch. Separating his motives between public interests and personal ones—partisan, financial or otherwise—would require the courts to delve into matters that are inherently political. Under Supreme Court precedent stretching back to Marbury v. Madison (1803), the judiciary has no power to do so. And lawmakers enjoy an analogous immunity under the Speech and Debate Clause.

The president’s independence from the other branches does not merely support “energy” in the chief executive, as the Framers intended. It also ensures that he, and he alone, is politically accountable for his subordinates’ conduct. If officials as critical to the executive branch’s core functions as the FBI director could determine whom and how to investigate free from presidential supervision, they would wield the most awesome powers of government with no political accountability. History has demonstrated that even when subject to presidential authority, the FBI director can become a power unto himself—as J. Edgar Hoover was for decades, severely damaging civil liberties.

There are limits to presidential power. The Constitution requires the Senate’s consent for appointment of the highest-level executive-branch officers—a critical check on presidential power. The Supreme Court has upheld statutory limits—although never involving criminal sanction—on the removal of certain kinds of officials. But the decision to fire principal executive-branch officers like the FBI director remains within the president’s discretion. A sitting president can also be subjected to civil lawsuits—but only in a carefully circumscribed fashion, to avoid impeding his ability to discharge the powers of his office.

The ultimate check on presidential power is impeachment. Even though Mr. Trump cannot have violated criminal law in dismissing Mr. Comey, if a majority of representatives believe he acted improperly or corruptly, they are free to impeach him. If two-thirds of senators agree, they can remove him from office. Congress would then be politically accountable for its action. Such is the genius of our Constitution’s checks and balances.

None of this is to suggest the president has absolute immunity from criminal obstruction-of-justice laws. He simply cannot be prosecuted for an otherwise lawful exercise of his constitutional powers. The cases of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton —the latter impeached, and the former nearly so, for obstruction of justice—have contributed to today’s confusion. These were not criminal charges but articulations of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the constitutional standard for impeachment.

And in neither case was the accusation based on the president’s exercise of his lawful constitutional powers. If a president authorizes the bribery of a witness to suppress truthful testimony, as Nixon was accused of doing, he can be said to have obstructed justice. Likewise if a president asks a potential witness to commit perjury in a judicial action having nothing to do with the exercise of his office, as Mr. Clinton was accused of doing.

Although neither man could have been prosecuted while in office without his consent, either could have been after leaving office. That’s why President Ford pardoned Nixon—to avoid the spectacle and poisonous political atmosphere of a criminal trial. In Mr. Trump’s case, by contrast, the president exercised the power to fire an executive-branch official whom he may dismiss for any reason, good or bad, or for no reason at all. To construe that as a crime would unravel America’s entire constitutional structure.

Messrs. Rivkin and Casey practice appellate and constitutional law in Washington. They served in the White House Counsel’s office and Justice Department in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-a-president-obstruct-justice-1512938781

December 11, 2017
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