Donald Trump just got terrible news on the indictment front

| 12:01 pm EST March 1, 2019
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For as long as it’s been clear that Donald Trump’s crimes were all going to come to the surface, there has been a debate about whether Trump can be indicted for those crimes while he’s still in office. Trump just got some pretty terrible news on that front, and it couldn’t come at a worse time for him.

Various pundits have long pointed to a stray DOJ memo from the 1970s which asserted that only the vice president, and not the president, could be indicted while in office. But this has never been any sort of binding policy, and in fact has never been tested on any level. So this will be decided by the courts, and because there’s no precedent, it’ll come down to what the courts think will or won’t fly with the American people. That brings us to today’ news.

If you were to survey the American people on whether it’s proper to criminally indict a sitting U.S. President, most of them would just be guessing. But as of today, sitting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has just been indicted. Not only is this unfolding story going to be reported widely in the United States, it’s going to be frequently mentioned within the context of the question of whether Trump can be indicted.

Israel’s constitutional decisions don’t set any sort of official precedent when it comes to the U.S. court system. But the Netanyahu indictment is going to set a major precedent in the U.S. court of public opinion. And if we’re correct that the court ruling on Donald Trump’s indictment is going to come down to what the courts think the American public will be okay with, then the Netanyahu indictment is terrible news for Donald Trump.