If the Donald Trump presidency has taught us anything, it’s that we can no longer expect political norms or pressure to convince someone to do the right thing. At every turn, Donald Trump does what is best for no one other than himself. While we may have lucked out this time that the Deputy Attorney General appointed a Special Counsel, in this day and age we can’t always count on people doing the right thing, because it is the right thing to do. From the Muslim Ban, to the American Healthcare Act, to firing FBI Director James Comey, President Trump seems to go out of his way to upend the status quo in a negative way. The crown jewel of the American experiment is our representative democracy, exemplified at the highest level by the office of the President. It is vital that the chosen leaders and representatives, fairly elected by the populace, realize their responsibility to further and protect the ideals of democracy to ensure the success and sustainability of the republic. This burden is especially heavy on the executive branch of the federal government and the office of the President of the United States. Franklin D. Roosevelt, our 32nd President stated:
The Presidency is not merely an administrative office. That’s the least of it. It is more than an engineering job, efficient or inefficient. It is pre-eminently a place of moral leadership. All our great Presidents were leaders of thought at times when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified.
That faith in the nobility and morality of the office has been tested by Donald Trump and his litany of scandals. We have been daily witnesses to revelations of his many conflict of interests, his untoward relationship with Russia’s Putin regime, and his general contempt for rule of law and his Constitutional oath to the American people.
The legislative and judiciary branches do have the power to impeach and remove, review and nullify laws, respectively, but they have not been adequately equipped with Constitutional powers to deal with such a high level of political corruption within the executive branch. In the wake of the Watergate scandal, Congress passed the Ethics in Government Act, which created the US Office of the Independent Counsel. This law created a special prosecutor with the ability to investigate high ranking federal officials and Presidential campaign organizations. This prosecutorial officer could be utilized by Congress or the Department of Justice, but the office resided outside the purview of the DOJ and could not be dismissed by the President. This was a key feature, as the head of the DOJ is a political appointee, who may lack impartiality to the will of the executive branch. The most recognizable Independent Counsel was probably Ken Starr, who helped initiate the impeachment process for Bill Clinton, due to information procured through a USOIC investigation. The law establishing the independent counsel expired in 1999, however, and was not reinstituted by Congress.
As President Trump’s Russia problems come to a head, thanks to the firing of FBI Director James Comey and the revelation that President Trump may have tried to influence the investigation into former NSA, Michael Flynn, the gears in Congress are slowly starting to shift towards the idea of impeachment. As we watch this process unfold, discussion must also be had about preventative methods that can be installed so that we can ensure that this does not ever happen again. Donald Trump’s plethora of red flags were all very obvious during the campaign, but there were no institutional guards to prevent him from attaining the Presidency. We all watched as he bucked tradition by not releasing his tax returns and brazenly stated that conflict of interest laws did not apply to him. We can no longer faithfully expect our head of state to self-police and follow and adhere to the democratic traditions and protocols of the Presidency. We must propose a Constitutional amendment that includes the following:
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A requirement that any candidate for the office of President must make public their income tax returns
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Any candidate for the office of President will be subject to US conflict of interest statutes and must be able to completely separate themselves from their business practices in order to prevent dealings and actions that may impact their financial interests
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The establishment of a permanent independent counsel for executive branch oversight
President Trump has, so far, withstood the political pressure to release his tax returns and divest from his business assets or place them in a blind trust. As he considers someone to fill the vacant FBI Director role, more pressure is building for a special prosecutor or independent commission to investigate the Russia/Trump ties. While we now have a Special Counsel to investigate the Trump/Russia issue, it is not truly independent, and at the end of the day it must still report to a Donald Trump Appointee, Rod Rosenstein.
It is now our duty to avert future constitutional crises of this nature by proposing an amendment that will prevent the type of candidate that can produce a President Trump. Lessons have been learned and unfortunately our political system has not been properly equipped to deal with the level of corruption currently on tap in our executive branch. Impeachment and removal (or any tangible legislative oversight) may or may not occur within this Republican-led Congress but it is imperative that when Democrats take back State legislature and Congressional seats in 2017 and 2018, we begin the process to amend the Constitution in order to ensure that we have a President and Commander-in-Chief that will hold the office in the highest regard and will work to protect and sustain the success of our republic.
Virginia CD 1 - Edwin Santana
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