If Patrick Fitzgerald is indeed either contemplating the indictment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney or contemplating naming them as unindicted co-conspirators in the plot to out Valerie Wilson as a CIA agent, we are entering uncharted legal waters. The one example history presents us, that of Watergate, differs in a very important respect: Leon Jaworski, the Watergate special prosecutor, had a House Judiciary Committee that was willing to take action and provide a remedy in the form of impeachment. Since the current House Judiciary Committee is obviously not so inclined, Fitzgerald is essentially faced with three options: 1) Indict Bush and Cheney and provoke a constitutional crisis on the question of whether a sitting President is indictable; 2) Name Bush and Cheney as unindicted co-conspirators and watch them get off scot free, to be tried only in the court of public opinion; or 3) Do nothing and let them get off without even public criticism.
Can a sitting President be indicted?
This was discussed by Jaworski et al. back in the Watergate era, and they deliberately decided to
avoid the question by going the unindicted co-conspirator route, hoping to press Congress into action so that it would be unnecessary to make precedent on the issue. They succeeded, and we were rid of Nixon, who resigned rather than face certain impeachment.
In the present era, the question threatens to bring on a constitutional crisis of unprecedented proportions, because the Republican House will almost certainly not take action in 2005 the way the Democratic House did in 1974 (with bipartisan support, mind you). What remedy will Fitzgerald have?
Here is the issue, as brilliantly outlined by Woodward and Bernstein in The Final Days:
The Constitution said clearly that if a President were impeached and removed from office, he was subject to criminal prosecution. But it was silent on the question of whether an indictment could be brought while he remained in office. If the President were indicted, his lawyers would challenge the indictment. The White House arguments would be strong . . . . What would the President do if someone started a nuclear war--ask for a recess?
Also the question of indictment would doubtless go to the Supreme Court. This would delay the trial of the other defendants charged in the conspiracy. . . .
There was the awful thought of an arraignment. How would Jaworski get a sitting President into court if, as seemed likely, he refused to come voluntarily? Would the special prosecutor send the marshals to pick him up at the White House and drag him to court? A ridiculous notion--but if it got down to raw power, the President had the armed forces at his disposal.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein,
The Final Days. New York: Avon, 1976, pp. 115-16 (paperback edition).
Though I can't find the quote for this one (I can swear I read it at some point), Jaworski believed that it clearly could not be the case that a sitting President could not be indicted for anything, however. Were that true, and were impeachment the only remedy for violations of law by the President, the President could forestall his impeachment permanently by serially murdering each and every Member of the House of Representatives. Since he couldn't be indicted or charged with the murders, he would get off scot free.
So the question, then, became at what point is a President indictable? Surely, he would be indictable for murder, but public policy considerations might motivate against permitting indictment for an offense such as obstruction of justice, the charge Jaworski was considering, while the possibility of impeachment still existed.
What if, with all of the evidence in front of them, the House Judiciary Committee had simply failed to act? What would Jaworski have done? This question seems particularly apropos of the current situation when one considers the makeup of the current House Judiciary Committee: not just Republican-led, but run by some of the worst Wingnuts the GOP has to offer. Of course, Sensenbrenner is chair, but Henry Hyde, John Hostettler, Darrell Issa, and Jeff Flake are also typical of the sort that Bugman has packed this committee with. To counter, Conyers is Ranking Member...
Of course, all of this is speculative. We don't even know if Fitzgerald has Bush and Dick in his crosshairs. But the Federal conspiracy statute cuts a very, very wide swath. If they did indeed attend meetings at which the matter was discussed, and if Fitzgerald indeed determines the outing of Valerie Wilson to have been the result of a criminal conspiracy, it is likely that both of them would be indictable but for the question of their official positions.
DO NOT FORGET, and I have emphasized this several times, that we are dealing here with a grand jury composed of 23 citizens of the District of Columbia, a jurisdiction which voted 89 percent for John Kerry. Though overall, they are a cross-section of our D.C. community, the preponderance of jurors that I see walking around the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse for the District of Columbia at Third Street and Constitution Avenue, N.W. are middle-aged African-American females. Jurors in the District of Columbia, like those in Austin, Texas, do not rubber-stamp ANYTHING. They are some of the most thoughtful, deliberate people I have ever encountered. But they do not tend to be at all deferential to power, especially not to Republican power, and if they had the evidence in front of them to indict George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, they would not at all be afraid to do so. Woodward and Bernstein, indeed, note:
In the last week of February, Jaworski met with the grand jury. The panel had been investigating Watergate for nineteen months. He knew from those of his assistants who usually met with the jury that the jurors were determined to indict the President. They had voted unanimously in a straw poll to charge the President with a crime. When the vote was taken, some of them had raised both hands. . . .
The members of the grand jury had many questions. Some of them were so incensed at Nixon that Jaworski was afraid he might have a runaway grand jury. With slow and reasoned argument, the special prosecutor told them that he understood their feelings and shared their frustrations. . . .
Following Jaworski's advice, the jury named Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States, as an unindicted co-conspirator in the plot to obstruct justice.
Id. at 120.
What will Fitzgerald do? And what are the arguments for going either way?