Law Professor Letter on President’s Article II Powers, June 4, 2018 [Note – this letter is several pages long, includes a list of signatories, as well as annotations and links to referenced works. What follows is only the beginning of the letter.]

“Dear Mr. McGahn (White House Counsel) & Mr. Flood (Special Counsel to the President): “We, legal scholars who study and teach constitutional and criminal law, write in connection with the President’s apparent belief that he is empowered by the Constitution to halt the Special Counsel’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election for any reason whatsoever, and his apparent view that he is not constrained by Congress’s duly enacted laws prohibiting the obstruction of justice. As reported in the New York Times, attorneys for the President wrote a letter to Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller asserting that the Constitution empowers him to “to terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon,” and that he cannot illegally obstruct any aspect of the investigation because of these powers.These views are incorrect. First, the best understanding of Article II of the Constitution is that presidential actions motivated by self-protection, self-dealing, or an intent to corrupt or suborn the legal system are unauthorized by and contrary to Article II of the Constitution. Second, and even if one does not accept the foregoing construction of Article II, Congress has enacted obstruction of justice statutes that prohibit any person from acting “corruptly” to interfere with federal criminal investigations. Whatever a President may have been able to do in the absence of such statutes, Congress’s judgment that obstruction of justice is prohibited binds the President…”