Elizabeth Warren wants to make it possible to indict sitting presidents

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) with her latest policy proposal is taking aim at the Department of Justice policy saying a sitting president can't be indicted.

Warren laid out her plan to end this policy in a Medium post on Friday, saying it would involve Congress passing a law clarifying its "intent that the Department of Justice can indict the president of the United States."

Additionally, Warren says she'd amend obstruction of justice statutes to "explicitly" allow for the president to be indicted, and if elected president, would appoint an assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel to reverse the rule that says a president can't be indicted. She also pledged to appoint an attorney general who "shares my strong conviction that no one — not even a president — is above the law."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

This proposal comes two days after former Special Counsel Robert Mueller in a press conference discussed the findings of his two-year investigation, which did not establish a criminal conspiracy between President Trump and Russia and did not conclude whether Trump obstructed justice but laid out instances of potential obstruction. Mueller said on Wednesday that indicting Trump was never "an option" because of the DOJ policy preventing it.

"If Donald Trump were anyone other than the president of the United States right now, he would be in handcuffs and indicted," Warren contended. The 2020 Democrat has already called on Congress to impeach Trump, but she says this should not be the only way to hold the president "accountable for criminal behavior."