Speculative discussion of presidential immunity and potential indictment hurdles

dismisses the argument made most aggressively by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz—who offers frequent legal advice to the President both in person and via television—and repeated recently by the President, and in the recently revealed letter sent by his lawyers to the Special Counsel in January, that a president cannot be prosecuted for exercising his constitutional prerogatives, even if they foster crimes. Again, the team argues that there is no statute or constitutional authority that puts the President above the law or that allows him to contribute to breaking the law. Curiously, the tradition breakers in the White House—supported by a many lawyers, both right and left leaning—now argue that the President's traditional and constitutionally mandated executive powers give him wide latitude for how he carries out his duties. "I don't think you are going to find a court who will not see the president's role as unique," said one White House advisor. "The Mueller theories are wishful thinking." Such an indictment is described in similar ways by both Mueller and White House insiders: it puts the President's public behavior on trial. The nature of that behavior, for the Mueller team, is corrupt; this, according to the White House, is how voters elected the President to behave. The Mueller team may have a high hurdle in convincing Rosenstein to approve the indictment. Giuliani recently put standing DOJ policy against the indictment of a president in hyperbolic terms: the President could kill James Comey if he wanted to without fear of prosecution. But, according to one former senior DOJ lawyer, Rosenstein in this circumstance may have the power to override the DOJ guidelines. The Mueller team appears to believe that Rosenstein's pledge before congress that, absent malfeasance, he will support the Special Counsel's independence with regard to the Russian investigation, means he will let the indictment go forward. In one view—and in the suspicion of some in the White House—he may have already authorized Mueller to proceed with the indictment. The counsel's office does, however, according to the papers I have reviewed, worry about the possibility that Trump will replace Rosenstein with someone who will fire Mueller or curtail the investigation. Indeed, the Mueller investigation seems concerned or shadowed by daily procedural questions of an existential nature— HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_029170