Bob Bauer served as White House Counsel to President Obama. In 2013, the President named Bob to be Co-Chair of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. He is a Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in Residence at New York University School of Law, as well as the co-director of the university's Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic. In 2020, he served as a senior advisor to the Biden campaign.
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Donald Trump is promoting, and his party is using various means of achieving, a politicized electoral process in which politicians would have more power to direct the running of elections in their self-interest.
Congress needs to clearly establish the Senate’s role in fact-finding during impeachment and define the procedure as a constitutional, not a legal, process.
The overriding question in the pending trial is whether the Senate trial will be the occasion for a seminal judgment on Trump’s conception of the office of the presidency.
Trump could consult the Office of Legal Counsel, the White House Counsel, personal attorneys—or no one at all.
If the president is bent on exploring unconstitutional paths and deploying mendacious, grossly irresponsible rhetoric, it seems entirely inadequate for Cipollone to simply express his objections in private and hope for the best.
Donald Trump operated the presidency in ways that reveal its vulnerability to dangerous excesses of authority and dangerous weaknesses in accountability. “After Trump” explains what should be done to mend the presidency after Trump leaves the scene.
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report calls on political campaigns to build protections against becoming channels for illicit foreign state influence. But lawmakers should also consider reforming the law.