WASHINGTON — A recently discovered sitting president’s ‘indictment memo’ from Kenneth W. Starr’s independent counsel investigation against President Bill Clinton highlights a constitutionally judicious way which sparks heating significance amid the Trump-Russia investigation ‘Can a sitting US president be indicted?

The newly found 56-page memo, which had been present in the National Archives for almost two decades and was obtained on request by The New York Times under the Freedom of Information Act, which amounts to rejecting the public held dogma and generally held view that a president is immune from indictment when he is holding the office. 

“It is proper, constitutional, and legal for a federal grand jury to indict a sitting president for serious criminal acts that are not part of, and are contrary to, the president’s official duties,” the Starr office memo concludes. “In this country, no one, even President Clinton, is above the law.”

Newly Disclosed Clinton-era Memo Says Presidents Can Be Indicted

Mr. Ronald Rotunda the experienced professor of constitutional law was hired by Mr. Starr to draft a memo in 1998 on the advice of his deputies that since they had gathered enough evidence against Clinton they could request the grand jury to indict him.

While Mr. Starr’s other team had drafted an indictment plan against Clinton which was also requested recently by The Times to be made public, the request was not accepted by The National Archives owing to the grand-jury’s privacy policy.

Previously in 1974, the Watergate special investigation team, Leon Jaworski, was also sent a similar  memo from his staff which also claimed that a president can be indicted- It was directed against Mr. Nixon the then sitting president. 

According to the NYT, 

“In the end, both Mr. Jaworski and Mr. Starr let congressional impeachment proceedings play out and did not try to indict the presidents while they remained in office. Mr. Starr, who had decided he could indict Mr. Clinton, said in a recent interview that he had concluded the more prudent and appropriate course was simply referring the matter to Congress for potential impeachment.”

Starr office memo, Mr. Rotunda deemed the ruling far more significant for the criminal question.

“If public policy and the Constitution allow a private litigant to sue a sitting president for acts that are not part of the president’s official duties (and are outside the outer perimeter of those duties), and that is what Clinton v. Jones squarely held,” he wrote, “then one would think that an indictment is constitutional because the public interest in criminal cases is greater.”

Source: NYT