Is President Trump Above the Law?
In the mid-1990s, President Bill Clinton made a bold legal claim: He couldn’t be subjected to civil lawsuits for his actions as a private citizen until after his presidency ended. As you can imagine, that assertion raised eyebrows across the legal community. Among its critics was George Conway, a prominent New York City lawyer, who wrote in a 1994 Los Angeles Times op-ed that the claim “smacks of the privilege of a sovereign or an autocrat—not a president of a democratic republic.”
Clinton was then in the middle of a heated legal battle with Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee who alleged Clinton sexually harassed her in a hotel room while he was governor. The case eventually led to Clinton’s impeachment after he lied under oath about an
