Adam Schiff reveals his plan to indict Donald Trump while he’s still in office
Earlier this week House Democrats including Adam Schiff publicly made the case to Donald Trump that, based on the two current felony counts from SDNY alone, he’s now guaranteed to be indicted and arrested the minute he’s no longer president. Now that Trump has had a few days to digest this dark reality, Schiff is now significantly upping the ante.
Adam Schiff appeared on CNN on Wednesday and revealed his rather simple plan for indicting Donald Trump while he’s still in office. Schiff pointed out that the four decade old Department of Justice guideline for not indicting a sitting president is indeed just a rule, not a law. He explained that he intends to simply push the DOJ to allow Trump to be indicted, either by changing the guideline, or making an exception to it due to current circumstances. So where does this get us?
Trump is already backed into a no-win corner. If he resigns soon, he might be able to negotiate some degree of leniency on federal criminal charges, though presumably no leniency on New York state charges. If Trump refuses to resign and he has to be removed the hard way through a grueling impeachment, he’ll be arrested the minute he’s ousted, and go to prison for the rest of his life. But now Schiff is making the situation even bleaker for Trump.
It’s not clear what would happen next if a grand jury did indict Donald Trump while he’s still in office. Normally the person would be arrested, or would be ordered to show up for immediate surrender. Even if this can’t happen to the “president,” the sheer ugliness of the specter of a grand jury indicting Trump would significantly reduce what little leverage he has left. Adam Schiff is a former prosecutor, so he knows how to maneuver these things – and he’s almost certainly coordinating with Robert Mueller.
