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Philosophy of Law - Legal Disagreement Over Witness Tampering
Philosophy of Law - Legal Disagreement Over Witness Tampering
Former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch arrives for the House Select Intelligence Committee hearing on the
impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump on November 15, 2019. | Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images
“Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad,” Trump wrote. “She started off
in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new
Yovanovitch was ousted from her ambassadorship back in April after she
apparently got in the way of Trump’s efforts to persuade the government of
Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.
Her testimony on Friday was clear, calm, and mostly unflattering to the Trump
administration. “As Foreign Service professionals are being denigrated and
undermined,” she told members of Congress, “the institution is also being
degraded. This will soon cause real harm, if it hasn’t already.”
Former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch testifies before the House Select Intelligence Committee on Friday,
November 15, 2019. | Caroline Brehman/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images
Trump has a habit of blasting critics on Twitter. But some observers — including
some loyal to the president — said this tweet was, at best, a very bad idea.
But did this tweet really cross a legal line into witness tampering?
I put this question to seven legal experts. Their responses, edited for clarity and
length, are below.
There wasn’t a perfect consensus, but most experts agreed that Trump’s tweet
falls pretty clearly within our understanding of an impeachable offense. As to
whether or not it constitutes a crime, the question is almost irrelevant since
prosecution is all but impossible.
Just as Trump cannot be indicted for campaign finance crimes while president
such as those involving Michael Cohen, he similarly could not be indicted for
witness intimidation including his tweets this morning either while he is still in
office. But accountability can come in different forms. The House of
Representatives could add witness intimidation as a separate article of
impeachment. Also, once Trump is an ex-president, federal prosecutors could
charge him with witness intimidation if they chose.
I would halt the proceeding — for the safety of the witness — and ask the judge for
a warrant for the arrest of the mob boss. The United States Criminal Code makes
witness intimidation a felony. The fact that a mob boss lives in the White House
should not excuse him from being brought to justice.
Because I am not a criminal law expert, I do not know if (2) would or would not be
a legally cognizable defense. (If a mob boss tweets, “Bad things are gonna happen
to anyone who testifies about my kid,” I don’t know if it’s a defense that he would
not have explicitly targeted a specific witness.)
Putting that aside, however, it must be said for the gazillionth time that
impeachment is not a criminal process. For the president of the United States to
seek to interfere by intimidation with testimony before a congressional hearing
plainly falls within Alexander Hamilton’s understanding of an impeachable offense:
“an abuse or violation of some public trust” that amounts to an injury “done
immediately to the society itself.”
If Trump had threatened Yovanovitch’s position in the U.S. foreign service — for
which she thankfully has statutory protections — the charge of witness tampering
might stick. But mere criticism — no matter how partisan, ill-founded, and unfair —
doesn’t equal witness tampering. That’s also true of witness tampering in the
context of impeachment.
But Hamilton and the rest of the framers knew that politics is sometimes unfair;
with the rise of political parties early in the Republic, all of the major players during
the founding era were subject to scurrilous charges on a daily basis. For example,
supporters of Jefferson attacked President Washington as a supposed lackey of
Hamilton and Hamilton as an agent of Great Britain. Washington wisely didn’t see
fit to respond to these allegations himself, but criticizing his accusers would not
have been witness tampering, even if Washington’s opponents had sought to
impeach him (as they came close to doing with Washington’s successor, John
Adams).
The “abuse of power” theory of impeachable offenses allows the President and
his supporters the right of reply in the political realm. Criticism of a witness’s past
is part of that political process. It may show that the president doesn’t “get it” and
will continue to abuse his power, making impeachment all the more imperative.
But it’s not witness tampering.
Understand the impeachment process, from its history to what comes next. Explore the full
guide here.
But many legal commentators argued explicitly that Trump’s tweets this morning
were crimes of witness intimidation, tampering, and obstruction, and I think that’s
a mistake. Such an interpretation runs the risk of creating a slippery slope to
infringe on the free speech of potential defendants to criticize witnesses and
make public their own defense. They run the risk of communicating an overly
aggressive scorched-earth approach to criminal law by Trump’s critics, who have
no shortage of stronger legal arguments.
The content of the tweets were not threats. One statement that commentators
focus on is the following: “They call it ‘serving at the pleasure of the President.’”
They suggest it’s a threat to fire a current employee. But in context, it was an
explanation for his power to have removed her earlier. There is a valid question
about whether a boss needs to be more careful than even a remote implication
about firing in retaliation, but a fair reading of context suggests this didn’t cross
that line.
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