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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNYTimes: Trump's Appointment of the Acting Attorney General Is Unconstitutional
The president is evading the requirement to seek the Senates advice and consent for the nations chief law enforcement officer and the person who will oversee the Mueller investigation.What now seems an eternity ago, the conservative law professor Steven Calabresi published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in May arguing that Robert Muellers appointment as special counsel was unconstitutional. His article got a lot of attention, and it wasnt long before President Trump picked up the argument, tweeting that the Appointment of the Special Counsel is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL!
Professor Calabresis article was based on the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, Article II, Section 2, Clause 2. Under that provision, so-called principal officers of the United States must be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate under its Advice and Consent powers.
He argued that Mr. Mueller was a principal officer because he is exercising significant law enforcement authority and that since he has not been confirmed by the Senate, his appointment was unconstitutional. As one of us argued at the time, he was wrong. What makes an officer a principal officer is that he or she reports only to the president. No one else in government is that persons boss. But Mr. Mueller reports to Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general. So, Mr. Mueller is what is known as an inferior officer, not a principal one, and his appointment without Senate approval was valid.
But Professor Calabresi and the president were right about the core principle. A principal officer must be confirmed by the Senate. And that has a very, very significant consequence today
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/opinion/trump-attorney-general-sessions-unconstitutional.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)"Who's going to stop me?"
libdem4life
(13,877 posts)unblock
(52,220 posts)But it remains to be seen if anything will come of it.
Will someone challenge it? Rosenstein certainly has standing, but I can't see him doing it as it would given Donnie cover to fire him.
Guppy
(444 posts)are a bunch of weirdos. Any group that would make Ted Cruz a rock star is wacko.
BruceWane
(345 posts)"By Neal K. Katyal and George T. Conway III"
Kellyanne's hubby. Definitely not the first public anti-Trump opinion from him, either.
spanone
(135,831 posts)👍🏼
WhiskeyGrinder
(22,337 posts)Which doesn't mean it's not valid. Your headline made me think that the NYT, as an institution, had run an editorial saying this. Instead it's simply an op-ed by two informed people.
spanone
(135,831 posts)WhiskeyGrinder
(22,337 posts)editorial page of the hard copy of the paper. A commentary has a byline and runs opposite the editorial page, hence the phrase "op-ed." This is the latter.
Fiendish Thingy
(15,607 posts)That seems to be the argument the cons are using to defend Whitakers appointment.
Can anyone clarify?
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)a senior senatorial staffer, and his show is especially interesting when attention shifts to congress.
Roland99
(53,342 posts)spanone
(135,831 posts)maybe he doesn't want to go to jail for trump...like John Mitchell
On February 21, 1975, Mitchell, who was represented by the criminal defense attorney William G. Hundley, was found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury and sentenced to two and a half to eight years in prison for his role in the Watergate break-in and cover-up, which he dubbed the "White House horrors." As a result of the conviction, Mitchell was disbarred from the practice of law in New York.[52] The sentence was later reduced to one to four years by United States district court Judge John J. Sirica. Mitchell served only 19 months of his sentence at Federal Prison Camp, Montgomery (in Maxwell Air Force Base) in Montgomery, Alabama, a minimum-security prison, before being released on parole for medical reasons.[53]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_N._Mitchell
Roland99
(53,342 posts)Listened to some audio clips on the way home
He sounds like and comes off like some guy running a right wing conspiracy theory website