Neal Katyal Quotes

Presidential power was overruled by the high bench in July 1974, when President Nixon was ordered to turn over some audio tapes of his White House conversations, including the 'smoking gun' tape of June 23, 1972, that revealing the Watergate cover up.

You must pursue this investigation of Watergate even if it leads to the president. I'm innocent. You've got to believe I'm innocent. If you don't, take my job.

I’m not your lawyer. But if I were in your shoes, I’d tell the President to burn the tapes immediately and then proclaim he’d done so as a matter of national security and executive privilege and out of an obligation to protect the office of the presidency.

There is nothing in the Constitution that authorizes or makes it the official duty of a President to have anything to do with criminal activities.

That the president of the United States may be subpoenaed, and examined as a witness, and required to produce any paper in his possession, is not controverted.

The Founding Fathers wisely concluded that it was not enough for the President to swear to obey the law. He had to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed," which means by his appointees and subordinates.

The failure of a President to provide information to Congress about impeachment inquiries is itself and impeachable offense.

The upshot of the Nixon tapes case was that any president is going to have an extremely hard time resisting a request from a law enforcement officer.

Some commentators have attacked the special counsel regulations as giving the attorney general the power to close a case against the president, as Mr. Barr did with the obstruction of justice investigation into Donald Trump. But the critics' complaint here is not with the regulations but with the Constitution itself.

Trump and Barr both insist that he has been cleared, but that's not what more than 1,000 former federal prosecutors who read the Mueller report say: The evidence described in the report would lead to an indictment of anyone else in the country. If that's right, we simply cannot have a president who remains in office because of a technicality.

No responsible scholar who thinks a sitting president cannot be indicted also thinks an attorney general can try to truncate a process of oversight - by Congress, for example - by 'pre-clearing' the president in advance.

Everything having to do with President Trump and Russia, whether it is Mr. Trump's demand for an investigation into the investigation by the special counsel Robert Mueller, or whether Mr. Trump will testify, requires an answer to one essential background question: Can Mr. Mueller seek to indict the president?

I don't doubt that there are many presidential acts that would constitute obstructions of justice if anyone but the president engaged in them but which constitute legitimate exercises of presidential power when the president engages in them.

If Nixon is not forced to turn over tapes of his conversations with the ring of men who were conversing on their violations of the law, then liberty will soon be dead in this nation. If Nixon gets away with that, then Nixon makes the law as he goes along - not the Congress nor the courts. The old Court you and I served so long will not be worthy of its traditions if Nixon can twist, turn and fashion the law as he sees fit.

One of the most solemn responsibilities of the president and it's set out expressly in the Constitution is that the president is to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, and that means the Constitution. It means statutes. It means treaties. It means all of the laws of the United States.

It's very difficult to pin down the President of the United States without subpoena powers.

We need a president who is willing to uphold the law.

The central question is simply put: What did the president know and when did he know it?

The laws have become so straight-jacketing that presidents and their aides dare not keep journals or diaries, lest they be subpoenaed by avid special prosecutors.

I ordered that they use any means necessary, including illegal means, to accomplish this goal. . . . The president of the United States can never admit that.

If the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him.

When the President of the United States breaks the law he must be held accountable. That is why I am introducing today a resolution to censure George W. Bush…. At the very heart of our constitution is the assumption that some members of the government will do wrong, and when they do, others in the government must do right…. The President has broken the law. Congress must act…. Our job is not to stand up and cheer when the President breaks the law.

The laws of the United States must be executed. I have no discretionary power on this subject; my duty is emphatically pronounced in the Constitution.

I didn’t e-mail during my Presidency because I was afraid of the Freedom of Information Requests.

No penance would ever expiate the sin against free government of holding that a President can escape control of executive powers by law through assuming his military role.