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Trump finally discovered he can't force the feds to prosecute Clinton -- and he's not happy
Trump ran for president because he wanted the power he thought came with the job, not the job that actually comes with the power
Link to tweet
Trump finally discovered he can’t force the feds to prosecute Clinton — and he’s not happy
“The saddest thing is because I’m president of the United States, I’m not supposed to be involved in the Justice Department.”
Updated by Dara Linddara@vox.com Nov 3, 2017, 10:18am EDT
A year after defeating Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, President Donald Trump is still really, really angry that the federal government he runs isn’t going after her.
....
But while the president has been known to use tweets to set federal policy (as he did while announcing a ban on trans service members in the US military, without warning the Pentagon he would be doing so), Friday morning’s tweets don’t actually mean he’s ordering the federal government to prosecute his electoral opponent based on the president’s own conviction that she committed a crime.
They actually mean that Trump may have finally accepted, apparently belatedly, that he can’t actually order the federal government to go after his political opponents — and he’s really, really not happy about it.
....
The idea that the head of the government can’t use his power to prosecute his enemies is literally at the core of the idea of the “rule of law” as it’s understood in America. Outside legal experts and lawmakers from both parties have been making that argument for months. ... But it seems that it came as a nasty surprise to President Donald Trump, and it’s not clear when he found out that he couldn’t manipulate the activity of the Justice Department — of if he has, in fact, made a decision he won’t try to soon reverse.
“The saddest thing is because I’m president of the United States, I’m not supposed to be involved in the Justice Department.”
Updated by Dara Linddara@vox.com Nov 3, 2017, 10:18am EDT
A year after defeating Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, President Donald Trump is still really, really angry that the federal government he runs isn’t going after her.
....
But while the president has been known to use tweets to set federal policy (as he did while announcing a ban on trans service members in the US military, without warning the Pentagon he would be doing so), Friday morning’s tweets don’t actually mean he’s ordering the federal government to prosecute his electoral opponent based on the president’s own conviction that she committed a crime.
They actually mean that Trump may have finally accepted, apparently belatedly, that he can’t actually order the federal government to go after his political opponents — and he’s really, really not happy about it.
....
The idea that the head of the government can’t use his power to prosecute his enemies is literally at the core of the idea of the “rule of law” as it’s understood in America. Outside legal experts and lawmakers from both parties have been making that argument for months. ... But it seems that it came as a nasty surprise to President Donald Trump, and it’s not clear when he found out that he couldn’t manipulate the activity of the Justice Department — of if he has, in fact, made a decision he won’t try to soon reverse.
2 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
