The Abuse of Presidential Power and Breach of the Public Trust
New York City Bar Association Report
The New York City Bar Association has released a report examining a broad pattern of conduct by President Donald J. Trump and his Administration that “reflects an ongoing abuse of presidential power and a grave breach of the public trust” and calls on Congress “to reclaim its power as a co-equal branch of government” and “use its Constitutional powers to curtail the ongoing and expanding abuses of Presidential authority.”
Drawing on publicly reported facts, court filings, and the Administration’s own statements and actions, the report concludes that the President and his staff “have repeatedly used the powers of the Executive Office not to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution,’ nor to ‘take care that the Laws be faithfully executed,’” but instead to suppress Constitutional rights, to advance personal interests, and to weaken the laws and institutions that sustain our constitutional democracy. “The number, scope, and nature of these abuses reach virtually every core responsibility of the presidency—from commanding the armed forces and enforcing the laws to safeguarding the health, safety, and welfare of the American people.”
The conduct the report analyzes falls into six principal categories:
First, the President has abused his role as Commander-in-Chief by deploying federal troops and federalized National Guard forces into American cities without lawful justification.
Second, the President and his Administration have repeatedly undermined fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution and federal law, including efforts to strip citizenship from a class of U.S.-born citizens, restrict voting and distort electoral representation, suppress protected speech and academic freedom, and sanction sweeping, rights-violating immigration enforcement and detention practices at home and abroad.
Third, the President and his Administration have systematically attacked judicial independence—personally vilifying judges, threatening noncompliance with adverse orders, failing to comply with court rulings, and attempting to intimidate private law firms and individual lawyers.
Fourth, the President and his Administration have sought to undermine Congress’s constitutional role and to dismantle or disable Congressionally mandated agencies and programs in ways that exceed the Executive Branch’s lawful authority.
Fifth, the President and his Administration have compromised national security and eroded our global standing and the rules-based order the United States helped build by, among many other actions, engaging in uses of force that contravene U.S. treaty obligations.
Sixth, the President is using the Presidency for personal enrichment on a scale without modern precedent in ways that conflict not only with the spirit but also likely the letter of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clauses and basic anti-corruption norms.
Calling on Congress
The City Bar calls on Congress “to use all available tools of accountability to address the ongoing threats to our constitutional democracy, the rule of law, the safety and rights of those subject to federal power, and the preservation of our constitutional system.” These tools include formal censure; investigations, including by special counsel; conditioning or restricting appropriations; and, through individual member initiatives, garnering public support against presidential abuses. “Each of these tools has an important role in our constitutional structure, though we seriously question whether they are adequate, either alone or in combination, to respond to the breadth and escalating scale of the abuse of presidential power and betrayal of the public trust,” states the report.
“There is, of course, another remedy that the Framers provided to Congress for precisely this purpose: impeachment,” the report states, noting that “because the Supreme Court has held that Presidents are immune from civil and criminal liability for actions taken within the core of their constitutional authority and because the President has broad pardon authority, impeachment is the primary mechanism by which a sitting President (or the President’s principal agents) may be held accountable for such abuses while in office. The question in any impeachment inquiry…is not whether the President (or his agents) violated a particular statute, but whether his conduct reflects a grave abuse of power or a significant breach of the trust placed in him by the people…. In our judgment, the pattern of Presidential conduct described in this report fits squarely within the Constitutional standard for impeachment.”
The City Bar writes that we “must not lose sight of all our nation has to lose by abdicating the roles and responsibilities of our tripartite government – with its separation of powers and its checks and balances – which was carefully designed to prevent despotism and rule by fear and fiat.” The report notes warnings by Benjamin Franklin in 1787 and a newly-elected California Governor Ronald Reagan in 1967 that our nation’s Constitutional government and freedoms must be defended in every generation and calls on Congress to take “effective action, as provided in the Constitution, to remedy the President’s gross abuse of office and betrayal of the public trust.” Only by taking that action, says the report, can Congress restore adherence to the rule of law and the principles needed, in the words of Franklin, “to keep our Republic.”
Read the report here: https://bit.ly/49jfeKj
See more Rule of Law-related reports and statements by the New York City Bar Association on its Rule of Law Facts & Resources page.
About the Association
The mission of the New York City Bar Association, which was founded in 1870 and has over 20,000 members, is to equip and mobilize a diverse legal profession to practice with excellence, promote reform of the law, and uphold the rule of law and access to justice in support of a fair society and the public interest in our community, our nation, and throughout the world. www.nycbar.org.