No More Presidential Hall Passes

NO ONE INCLUDING THE PRESIDENT IS ABOVE THE LAW

Our current President Trump is now drowning in a sea of lawsuits being filed against just about everything he has done or said  in the past and now as President rightfully so simply because he is so pompous and offensive in just about everything he says or does. The question now is that should he be given a hall pass simply because he is President? Just the salacious lawsuits involving his sordid sex life is mounting in lawsuits against him. He is using campaign election donations to pay for his multiple lawyers who keep quitting on him. He is being sued by a former Apprentice contestant for defamation. He is being sued by an adult film actress who believes that the NDA she signed is invalid. His lawyers are suing her back. The President is also being sued by the District of Columbia in the state of Maryland for using his Trump International Hotel (that he named “International” simply because he felt like it) located just down the block from the White House, to house visiting Diplomats for his own personal profits. Typing about all his current lawsuits is exhausting so these above mentioned cases are just a few of Trump’s focus rather than making as he likes to say, “Make America Great.”

Trump’s antics bring up an interesting topic that our law makers haven’t had to deal with before in American history. For the most part courts treat Presidents differently from other citizens. The idea being that the President’s job is different from other jobs and the courts take that into account when deciding or not to tie up a President in legal actions. Trump is involved in so many legal actions that the logic is putting the back off the President policy to the test. This President is losing respect even with the courts. Robert Bauer, a former White House Counsel Attorney said, “One of the tensions that we have in the law that is constantly tested by fresh instances, new applications, is between on the one hand the view that the presidency is this extraordinary institution and it shouldn’t be hobbled by lawsuits while at the same time the overall competing sense that a president simply cannot rely on the holding of that office to insulate him from responsibility for his acts under the law.”

It looks like the courts are fed up with Trump. In the case of the TV show reality star, the courts ruled that the President CAN be sued in State Court. That is a new policy. In the Trump Hotel case, it is the first time that the courts have ruled that it is the first time that it allowed someone other than the Congress by using the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution that states that a President can’t act like nobility and accept monetary or other kinds of gifts from other countries. Trump is not a king. We don’t have kings in this country that can accept monetary profits simply because he is President. American Presidents should be serving the American people and not be serving their own personal profits because they are our elected officials.

In the porn star case. No President has ever sued anyone to enforce a NDA. That case also has the potential to change legal polices on an American President too. The Trump Presidency is shaking up this country in negative ways than no other President has ever done in American History. Before Bill Clinton’s scandal it was virtually impossible to sue a President but then Paula Jones came forward and the Supreme Court ruled for the first time that sitting Presidents ARE NOT immune from personal lawsuits while being President. President Clinton was even being deposed on camera for all Americans to see his testimony. Presidents who became deposed after Clinton didn’t have to be deposed on camera. Is Trump pissing in the well for all future Presidents to follow? Probably not but Trump will be drowning in civil litigation probably for the rest of his time in office and beyond because he has thrust himself into so many gauntlets.

The only thing we have learned from Trump’s Presidency is that he is the master of self-promotion and is personally profiting from it. Whether Trump wins or loses his lawsuits, at least it all says that the courts will in the future hold all Presidents accountable for their actions and will no longer be immune from litigation simply because they hold the top job in America.