Former U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy said Saturday that President Trump cannot be charged with obstructing justice for exercising his presidential powers.
The conservative commentator said Trump’s actions are only impeachable if it can proved that they represented a gross abuse of power, and there is not enough to indicate that actions laid out in the Mueller report fall outside the president’s constitutional powers.
“What Barr said is, and I think this is right, that a president can be cited for obstruction if he commits the usual, traditional kind of obstructive acts, like tampering with witnesses, tampering with evidence,” McCarthy said on Fox News, referring to Attorney General William Barr.
“But if a president is exercising his constitutional authority under Article 2 of the Constitution, like issuing a pardon, weighing in on whether someone should be prosecuted, pardoning a subordinate, those are constitutional prerogatives of the president and they cannot be grist for a federal prosecution to bring an obstruction charge.”
Mueller’s investigation identified 10 episodes that could be viewed as potential obstruction of justice but did not recommend any further indictments, allowing the Justice Department to make its own determination.
