Why wasn't former President Bush of the USA, charged with any crimes, when we marched into Afghanistan and Iraq by his orders, under pretenses?
Why wasn't former President Bush of the USA, charged with any crimes, when we marched into Afghanistan and Iraq by his orders, under pretenses?
You're viewing part of a thread.
Not quite. The constitution has a cutout for official duties of the office. The president must faithfully carry out the duties of the office. So knowingly lying can fail that test.
If you want someone to blame for the US invasion of Iraq, blame Italy, their Intelligence apparatus, and Nicolò Pollari in particular. He submitted the “Iraq is buying Yellowcake” to the CIA twice, who figured out it was a forgery before setting a private meeting with the vice president who did not know the CIA had already ruled it out.
The Constitution lists one crime: treason. He didn't do that. Not faithfully carrying out the duties of the office is absolutely grounds for impeachment, but it's not a crime.
That’s not true. Even the specific rules laid out in the constitution have limits. You have the right to freedom of speech, and yet it is silent about the type of speech protected. We did not write down that the president is allowed to lie about winning the election in the constitution, but we did write down the president must carry out the duties of the office faithfully, and we gave Congress the power to create laws, which all citizens are bound. The president is a citizen, not a king, and I have to say this again as it was very important to the authors of the constitution: The president is not a king. He doesn’t have the divine right. Trump’s just another citizen who was temporarily given the power of the executive. You could charge him with a crime and put his ass in prison while he was a president without impeaching him. Executive privilege is court tested, but it only applies to confidentiality, and going in front of the public and lying is, by definition, not confidential.
That’s not true.
Source? This says it also mentions piracy and counterfeiting, but it's just listing it as one of the enumerated powers.
and we gave Congress the power to create laws, which all citizens are bound.
Exactly. Congress has to make things a crime. The fact that the Constitution says that the president has to faithfully carry out their duties doesn't make not doing that a crime.
If you're saying that Congress did pass such a law, can you tell me which one?
I think you folks are talking past each other. The constitution requires faithful fulfillment of the duties of office, so because of that requirement, presidents swear oaths of duty. Lying under oath is a crime (not delineated in the constitution) and a violation of the faithful fulfillment of duties, which means that he is violating the terms of presidency set out in the constitution (also not a crime, but impeachable).
But you'd have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he intended not to uphold the oath of office when he made it.
Not to impeach him, just to successfully charge him with purgery.
It's not illegal to not do that. The legal framework to deal with that is impeachment and trial by Congress.
Not quite. Trump is currently being charged in federal court for his part in lying to overturn the election. They used “knowingly false” 32 times in the indictment for a reason. His defense is not that the president is allowed to lie, but rather that he truthfully believed he was telling the truth, so I’m not sure where you assertion is coming from: It is illegal to lie in furtherance of breaking the law, even for the POTUS.
Trump is not being put on trial for lying per se. The lying however is part of the furtherance of a criminal conspiracy, which is illegal. So with regards to Bush, he can't be charged with lying to the American people. It can however be used as evidence against him if it was part of furthering a criminal conspiracy.
To the best of my knowledge, we have never put a president on trial for the faithfulness clause (and no, impeachment is not an actual criminal/constitutional trial, no matter how much we treat it as such)