If he waits until October 24 to resign (and hasn't been impeached by then), the five year statute of limitations will have run out on the Maryland state charges. As President, he can't be indicted on state charges before that date, and he can write himself a going-away pardon for any Federal charges (tax-evasion,money laundering, RICO, etc.) and return to Maryland scott-free.
Well I don't know if it has ever been constitutionally determined that the president is exempt from state criminal prosecution. (Though if pressed I think the Supreme Court would probably rule that they are.)
How early did the case against Agnew come to light? Apparently the evidence against him was pretty overwhelming (one of the US attorneys involved in the investigation, a Republican, James Thompson, said he had never seen a stronger case of bribery and extortion), so maybe Congress can move fast enough to have Agnew impeached and removed from office before the October 24 deadline.
fred1451 said:
Except, when their guy gets caught with his hands in the cookie jar then all the hate and discontent rains down on him instead of it being swept under the rug with as little fuss and bother as possible. This way everyone stays happy.
By that logic no politician would ever get prosecuted. It's one thing to sweep a technical campaign violation or minor ethics offense under the rug. Most politicians are probably guilty of those, so they all have an incentive in having those type of offenses not be prosecuted. But Agnew went way beyond the minor offenses that all politicians commit level. He committed blatant, serious criminality well beyond what is acceptable under the unwritten rules of politics.
Putting Agnew in Jail does nothing for anyone, and at the same time not doing it allows brownie points to be accrued. What would Maryland get out of putting an ex-president into the pokey and at the same time pissing off a lot of Federal Republican politicians?
Brownie points??? The prosecutor who lets Agnew off the hook is done. He just whiffed on the most important criminal case of the century, despite having a slam dunk case. That's a career ending failure right there.
And why do you think any federal Republican politicians would retaliate over Agnew being prosecuted? Agnew effectively admitted he was guilty when he pardoned himself. Why is any Republican politician going to feel even slightly protective of an obvious criminal who probably has a national approval rating comparable to Charles Manson? Post-pardon Spiro Agnew seems a rather unlikely hill for any prominent Republican to die upon.
As far as outrage goes, what would the outrage of a bunch of state prosecutors matter to a bunch of Federal Congress people?
I don't understand your point here. What can Congress do to prevent a state prosecution? It's not as though Congress is going to declare the state of Maryland in insurrection and send in the 82nd Airborne to prevent the prosecution, so what does Congress have to do with whether or not Maryland officials take up the case?
