Benjamin Wittes Quotes

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.

Every president since George Washington has taken executive privilege seriously. Every Republican president has.

I don’t know if President (George W.) Bush understood how extreme some of the arguments were about executive power that some people in his administration were making.

There's several different forms of executive privilege. The one that is most absolute would be close advisers talking to the president himself.

That's the good thing about being president, I can do whatever I want.

Protection really takes on the personality of the President.

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.

Executive Privilege

When a President asserts constitutional powers he needs to be pretty certain he has those powers.

There are a lot of presidents in both parties - including President Obama - who had strong claims of executive privilege that I certainly think went too far.

The Constitution gives the president of the United States an extraordinarily wide grant of authority to use the power of the pardon.

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.

I think that presidents don't give up power that has accrued to them by the precedent of previous presidents. Even when they say they would like to, I think once they get there they don't give it up.

When the President does it, that means that it's not illegal.

It’s hard for a President to make case for more powers when he has not used the powers he already has.

The powers that are surrendered [by Congress] to one President remain to be used by others.

Control is not a luxury that most Presidents are allowed.

Is there really a way to restrict the powers of the Commander in Chief ... when one man's swiftly pressing the button may be necessary for some degree of national survival?

There is one thing about being President—nobody can tell you when to sit down.

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.

Once you become president, you don't even have to stop for red lights. And if it looks like traffic's too bad, you just take a helicopter.

The idea that the president doesn't interfere in law-enforcement investigative matters is one of our deep normative expectations of the modern presidency. But it is not a matter of law. Legally, if the president of the United States wants to direct the specific conduct of investigations, that is his constitutional prerogative.

Presidential powers are not exercised by a body or group. The Constitution vests 'all executive power' in one and only one person - the president.

Naturally, the president, as a US citizen, cannot be removed from the country. Nor can the president, who is the country's chief executive, be restricted from access to classified information or provided with falsified information.

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