The Russia issue will not go away for President Trump, and Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller seems to be hot on the President’s trail. But the question remains, what is the legal status of the elected head of the Executive branch of the government? Can a president be indicted, should it come to that? Is impeachment the only legal remedy against lawbreaking by a president? And are investigations into a president’s legal problems inevitably tainted by politics?
Here are the latest developments: Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, has been charged for illegally covering up his lobbying work as an agent for a Russia-connected faction in the Ukraine. And now, while under house arrest, he has violated the terms of his bail by having an actual Russian intelligence agent ghost-write an Op-Ed piece arguing for his release. That looks bad–why was a Russian agent, however defined, ever working for Trump?–but it does not touch the president.