Litman:Trump’s candidacy complicates a potential criminal case against him, but it can’t protect him | EditorialI think it’s wrong for Trump to be allowed to be indicted, but he should be protected. I think it’s wrong for prosecutors to indict someone who doesn’t have a case to present, but there should be a due process that protects the rights of defendants in criminal cases. I think it’s wrong to release an indictment that shows the indictment lacks any evidence against the defendant, but to prevent an indictment that is based on incomplete evidence that is damaging to that defendant or the public interest.
Kurt Nimmo is a CNN political commentator and host of the weekly podcast “Nimcoethics.”
On September 25 of this year, the US Supreme Court granted Donald Trump’s petition to stay as the election nears.
That stay would normally be used to allow the state of New York to go ahead and get started with an investigation into the Trump campaign’s connections with Russia. Instead, the Trump campaign and its supporters have been trying to have Trump’s case for impeachment — which is essentially a criminal matter — adjudicated first and only once the election is over.
They have also been pushing for an extraordinary remedy: to stop the indictment of the president because he has not been charged yet.
This week, the argument for this extraordinary remedy began in earnest. It had been set in motion by two cases — Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel investigation and the case of the ‘never Trump’ Republican Senators from Kentucky and North Carolina.
The special counsel investigation concerns the alleged interference in the 2016 US election by the Russian government. It looks at possible criminal action by President Trump’s campaign and his associates in connection with that action.
The Kentucky and North Carolina Senators’ case calls for immediate impeachment. They want it to be the case that they took their oaths of office to serve the US Constitution, not the president.
The President’s supporters have pushed back. They say the special counsel investigation is not a case involving
