President Donald Trump, or any other commander in chief, can't be found guilty of obstructing justice because the Constitution says so, according to one of Trump’s top lawyers. 
 
 John Dowd, among several attorneys representing the president, told Axios that the Constitution makes Trump the nation's top cop, so by definition the president "cannot obstruct justice, because he is the chief law enforcement officer," Dowd said. He added that Trump "has every right to express his view of any case." 
 
 The latter comment refers to Trump's tweets dismissing special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into the Trump campaign's alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 election. Most recently, Michael Flynn, the president's former national security adviser and campaign aide, pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the FBI, and one day later, Trump's Twitter account posted a comment that could help bolster a case of obstruction: 
 
 “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!” Trump posted, the first time he suggested he knew Flynn lied to investigators. 
 
 The tweet could be seen as evidence of obstruction of justice because Trump later reportedly asked then-FBI Director James Comey to “let” the Flynn thing “go." 
 
 Dowd said that he wrote the tweet. Not that it matters, because the president can't be found guilty of obstruction, the lawyer claims. 
 
 It’s not clear which section of the Constitution's Article II Dowd was referencing, though Section Two does read: “ The president] may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices.” 
 
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 But according to Dowd, the tweet was the furthest thing from an admission of guilt or obstruction. 
 
 "The tweet did not admit obstruction. That is an ignorant and arrogant assertion,” Dowd told Axios. 
 
 Dowd’s comments hark back to former President Richard Nixon’s defense of his actions in office. Nixon, who resigned in August 1974 before he could be impeached, famously said during his interviews with British journalist David Frost in 1977 that “when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.” 
 
 REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan 
 
 In Nixon’s case, he was talking about the cover-up in the Watergate scandal, while Trump’s case involves the president’s powers over the Justice Department. Trump lamented in November that the “saddest thing” about being president is that he is “not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department” and the “FBI.” 
 
 Trump then asked why the Justice Department was not going after his former presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton, and her private email server scandal. He also wondered why the department was not investigating Clinton’s campaign for hiring the company that created the infamous Trump-Russia dossier that has dogged Trump’s first year in office. ||||| A Democratic representative from the Los Angeles suburbs has introduced an article of impeachment against President Donald Trump on Wednesday, a move being described as a “longshot bid” to remove him from office. 
 
 Rep. Brad Sherman , D-Sherman Oaks, was joined by Rep. Al Green , D-Texas, in formally alleging Trump had committed high crimes and misdemeanors. 
 
 “We now begin the effort to force the House Judiciary Committee to hold hearings on obstruction of justice and Russian interference in our election,” Sherman’s statement on Wednesday said. 
 
 https://twitter.com/BradSherman/status/885192153777025033 
 
 The congressman cites emails shared this week by Donald Trump Jr. that he says indicate “Trump’s campaign was eager to receive assistance from Russia.” 
 
 “It now seems likely that the president had something to hide when he tried to curtail the investigation of (former) National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and the wider Russian probe,” he said. “I believe his conversations with, and subsequent firing of, (former) FBI Director James Comey constitute obstruction of justice.” 
 
 RELATED: What is obstruction of justice? 
 
 Sherman says he wishes a president could be removed for “impulsive, ignorant incompetence,” but that he hopes introducing the article might at least inspire change in the White House. The congressman won’t likely see success against a Republican-controlled Congress, at least based on what is now known. 
 
 “I have slight hope it will inspire an ‘intervention’ in the White House,” Sherman said. “If impeachment is real, if they actually see articles, perhaps we will see incompetency replaced by care. Perhaps uncontrollable impulses will be controlled. And perhaps the danger our nation faces will be ameliorated.” 
 
 Green says he doesn’t look at their decision as a long shot or a sure shot. 
 
 “I see this as the right thing to do,” he told The Houston Chronicle. “I've always felt that if I'm doing the right thing, my conscience is clear, and I think history will vindicate me regardless of how the House votes." 
 
 The normal process for impeachment is for articles alleging “high crimes or misdemeanors” to be considered by the House Judiciary Committee. If they pass on a simple majority vote, they are taken up by the full House. If the House passes an article or articles, the president is impeached, as Bill Clinton was in 1998. But a president can only be convicted and removed from office by a two-thirds vote of the Senate, which has never happened. 
 
 https://twitter.com/RepAlGreen/status/884872674119475200 
 
 The impeachment article cites three ways the congressmen believe Trump sought to cause “hindrance or termination” of investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election and “violations” by Flynn. 
 
 1. Requesting Comey curtail the investigation into Flynn 
 
 2. Firing Comey 
 
 3. Admitting to firing Comey for not closing the investigations 
 
 White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded on Wednesday by calling the filing “utterly and completely ridiculous, and a political game at its worst." 
 
 Read the filing signed by Sherman and Green here. 
 
 Email: abby.hamblin@sduniontribune.com 
 
 Twitter: @abbyhamblin ||||| It's John Dowd, and not the president, most at risk if a quid pro quo was offered. 
 
 It's John Dowd, and not the president, most at risk if a quid pro quo was offered. 
 
 If John Dowd discussed the possibility of a presidential pardon with lawyers for Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort while Dowd was serving as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, it’s a big deal -- definitely for Dowd, and conceivably for Trump. 
 
 The president has the inherent power to pardon anyone he wants. But doing so with a corrupt reason -- such as saving the president’s skin -- would be obstruction of justice. 
 
 Supposing that Dowd acted after conversations with Trump, the chain of obstruction would lead back to the president. And even if Dowd acted on his own initiative, he himself could be guilty of obstruction of justice. 
 
 Start with an important caveat: This episode is unlikely to lead to Trump’s being impeached or charged with a crime. What we know so far is that someone (or rather three someones) told the New York Times that Dowd discussed the possibility of pardons with lawyers for Flynn, the former national security adviser, and Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, while both were being investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller. 
 
 Dowd, who resigned last week as the president’s lead lawyer for Mueller’s investigation, denies the allegations. If they can credibly be shown to be true, they wouldn’t on their own be enough to put Trump in the hot seat. Trump could say that Dowd never discussed the pardons with him. And it would be very difficult to get Dowd to testify against Trump, who was his client at the time. 
 
 Technically, what Dowd may have said to other lawyers outside Trump’s presence isn’t likely to be covered by attorney-client privilege between Dowd and Trump. And if a lawyer and a client together conspire to commit a crime, it’s not impossible for prosecutors to break privilege. In theory, it isn’t totally impossible that Dowd could be made to testify against Trump. 
 
 In reality, however, it would be unusual for prosecutors to flip a criminal defense lawyer against a client -- and all the more so when the client is the U.S. president. 
 
 Practically, then, Dowd’s future is more on the line than Trump’s. If he was waving the possibility of a pardon before Flynn and Manafort in order to induce them not to cooperate with Mueller, then he was corruptly trying to influence and obstruct the course of justice. 
 
 Dowd has defenses available to him other than the denial he has already issued. He could, for example, say that he was not in any way suggesting that Trump would confer a pardon as part of a corrupt deal to stop Flynn and Manafort from cooperating. He could insist that by mentioning the pardon, he was just reviewing possible options. 
 
 There’s something even plausible about that notion: Everyone on earth was speculating about whether Trump might pardon close associates. We know that Trump told then-FBI Director James Comey that Flynn was a good guy. Assuming that Trump meant it, the speculation about a possible pardon was perfectly reasonable. 
 
 There’s no law against telling a potential defendant’s lawyer that his client might ultimately be pardoned. Proving that Dowd was implicitly offering some sort of deal to the lawyers for Flynn and Manafort would be pretty difficult. So while Dowd should be hiring his own lawyer today, he probably doesn’t have to fear for his liberty, at least not yet. 
 
 That’s the thing about obstruction of justice that would operate through the president’s exercise of authority that would otherwise be lawful. It’s not only that there’s a robust debate about whether such activity could legally be prosecuted as a crime. What really matters is that in practice, it would be very hard to prosecute without concrete evidence of corrupt intent like a quid pro quo. 
 
 Of course, obstruction of justice can also be a high crime or misdemeanor for purposes of impeachment, as it was for President Bill Clinton and as it would have been for President Richard Nixon had he not resigned. 
 
 But the president’s lawyer isn’t the president. Dowd can’t be impeached, because he isn’t and wasn’t a public official. Conceivably, he could be pressured to testify in a Senate impeachment trial. 
 
 But there, as in a criminal trial, it would be risky business to force a criminal defense lawyer to testify against his client. The precedent is terrible. And lawyers like to stick together and look out for the interests of their profession. (OK, our profession.) 
 
 The true takeaway from Wednesday’s allegations is that there’s something deeply problematic about a situation in which the president’s personal lawyer was talking to lawyers for the president’s aides -- about anything at all. The president’s power to pardon makes any such conversations into a double-edged sword. 
 
 Even if Dowd never mentioned the pardon and never discussed it with Trump, the mere fact of communication raises the implicit possibility of a deal to protect the president in exchange for a pardon. This is what lawyers mean when they warn that criminal investigation begets more criminal investigation. Regardless of whether Flynn or Manafort have anything useful that they might or might not say to Mueller, the investigation of their conduct is already tainting the president. 
 
 This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. ||||| WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - A series of tweets by U.S. President Donald Trump about the investigation into contacts between his 2016 campaign and Russia prompted concerns on Sunday among both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham saying Trump could be wading into “peril” by commenting on the probe. 
 
 U.S. President Donald Trump waves as he boards Air Force One at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, before his departure back to Washington, U.S., December 2, 2017. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas 
 
 “I would just say this with the president: There’s an ongoing criminal investigation,” Graham said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.” 
 
 “You tweet and comment regarding ongoing criminal investigations at your own peril,” he added. 
 
 On Sunday morning, Trump wrote on Twitter that he never asked former FBI Director James Comey to stop investigating Michael Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser - a statement at odds with an account Comey himself has given. 
 
 That tweet followed one on Saturday in which Trump said: “I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President (Mike Pence) and the FBI.” 
 
 Legal experts and some Democratic lawmakers said if Trump knew Flynn lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and then pressured Comey not to investigate him, that could bolster a charge of obstruction of justice. 
 
 Trump’s attorney, John Dowd, told Reuters in an interview on Sunday that he had drafted the Saturday tweet and made “a mistake” when he composed it. 
 
 “The mistake was I should have put the lying to the FBI in a separate line referencing his plea,” Dowd said. “Instead, I put it together and it made all you guys go crazy. A tweet is a shorthand.” 
 
 Dowd said the first time the president knew for a fact that Flynn lied to the FBI was when he was charged. 
 
 Dowd also clouded the issue by saying that then-Acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates informed White House counsel Don McGahn in January that Flynn told FBI agents the same thing he told Pence, and that McGahn reported his conversation with Yates to Trump. He said Yates did not characterize Flynn’s conduct as a legal violation. 
 
 Part of Yates’ testimony in May before a Senate committee appears to conflict with Dowd’s account. She said at the time that she declined to answer McGahn when he asked how Flynn had done in his FBI interview. Dowd said he stood by his version of events. 
 
 Dowd said it was the first and last time he would craft a tweet for the president. 
 
 “I’ll take responsibility,” he said. “I’m sorry I misled people.” 
 
 Yates did not respond to an email seeking comment, and a lawyer for McGahn did not respond to requests for comment. 
 
 The White House also did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 
 
 ‘CONTINUAL TWEETS’ 
 
 The series of tweets came after a dramatic turn of events on Friday in which Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations last December with Russia’s then-ambassador in Washington, Sergei Kislyak, just weeks before Trump entered the White House. 
 
 Flynn also agreed to cooperate with prosecutors delving into contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russia before the president took office. 
 
 Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said she believed the indictments in the investigation so far and Trump’s “continual tweets” pointed toward an obstruction of justice case. 
 
 “I see it most importantly in what happened with the firing of Director Comey. And it is my belief that that is directly because he did not agree to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation. That’s obstruction of justice,” Feinstein said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” 
 
 “The president knew he (Flynn) had lied to the FBI, which means that when he talked to the FBI director and asked him to effectively drop this case, he knew that Flynn had committed a federal crime,” Adam Schiff, senior Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told the ABC program “This Week.” 
 
 The Russia matter has dogged Trump’s first year in office, and this weekend overshadowed his first big legislative win when the Senate approved a tax bill. 
 
 Flynn was the first member of Trump’s administration to plead guilty to a crime uncovered by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian attempts to influence the 2016 U.S. election and potential collusion by Trump aides. 
 
 Russia has denied meddling in the election and Trump has said there was no collusion. 
 
 Comey, who had been investigating the Russia allegations, was fired by Trump in May. He told the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee in June he believed his dismissal was related to the Russia probe, and said Trump asked him to end the investigation of Flynn. 
 
 “I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!” Trump said on Twitter on Sunday. 
 
 On CBS, Graham criticized Comey, saying he believed the former FBI director made some “very, very wrong” decisions during his tenure. But Graham also said Trump should be careful about his tweets. 
 
 “I’d be careful if I were you, Mr. President. I’d watch this,” Graham said. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. 
 
 / Updated By Kristen Welker and Max Burman 
 
 WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's personal lawyer took responsibility Sunday for a tweet that Trump sent the previous day, in which the president said for the first time that he knew his former security adviser, Michael Flynn, had lied to the FBI before he fired Flynn in February. 
 
 The tweet caused an uproar in Washington because it implied Trump knew Flynn had committed a felony — lying to the FBI — when he told then-FBI director James Comey to go easy on Flynn the day after the firing. 
 
 Interfering in the FBI's investigation could be construed as obstructing justice, potentially creating legal jeopardy for Trump. Within a few hours, Trump's personal lawyer, John Dowd, stepped in to say that he wrote the tweet, not the president. 
 
 Dowd told NBC News that he drafted the tweet and then sent it to White House Social Media Director Dan Scavino to publish. When asked for the original email he sent to Scavino, Dowd said he dictated it orally. 
 
 I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2017 
 
 "I'm out of the tweeting business," Dowd said with a chuckle. "I did not mean to break news." 
 
 Trump, however, issued 10 tweets in 24 hours related to the Russia investigation, the FBI, and how federal investigators should really be looking into Hillary Clinton. 
 
 He also denied that he asked Comey to back off the investigation, though Comey has testified to that effect under oath before Congress. 
 
 "I never asked Comey to stop investigating Flynn," he tweeted on Sunday morning. "Just more Fake News covering another Comey lie!" 
 
 John Dowd leaves U.S. District Court in Manhattan in May 2011. Brendan McDermid / Reuters file 
 
 Dowd said that Trump's other tweet saying Flynn was fired in part for lying to the FBI was a reference to a statement made by acting Attorney General Sally Yates when she came to the White House on Jan. 26. At that time, she told White House Counsel Don McGahn that Flynn had "given the agents the same story he gave the Vice President." 
 
 "For some reason, the [Justice] Department didn't want to make an accusation of lying," Dowd said. "The agents thought Flynn was confused." 
 
 McGahn then passed that information on to the president, Dowd said. 
 
 "All the president knew was that the department was not accusing him of lying," Dowd said. 
 
 Dowd's decision to claim responsibility for the tweet was first reported by The Washington Post and confirmed by NBC News on Sunday. 
 
 In another tweet sent early on Sunday morning, Trump denied ever asking Comey to drop his investigation into Flynn. 
 
 Dowd added: "The point of that tweet was entirely correct. It's just very sad. I don't know why the guy lied. He didn't need to." 
 
 According to court documents, Flynn twice lied to the FBI about his interactions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Flynn falsely said he had not asked Kislyak "to refrain from escalating the situation" in response to sanctions that the U.S. had imposed against Russia on Dec. 29, three weeks before the Trump administration came into office. 
 
 Court documents also said that Flynn had lied when he claimed that he had not asked Kislylak “to delay a vote on or defeat” a U.N. Security Council resolution on Dec. 22. 
 
 Nope. Not letting this go. The FBI’s reputation is not in “tatters”. It’s composed of the same dedicated men and women who have always worked there and who do a great, apolitical job. You’ll find integrity and honesty at FBI headquarters and not at 1600 Penn Ave right now — Eric Holder (@EricHolder) December 3, 2017 
 
 On both occasions, Flynn sought counsel with senior Trump transition officials before speaking to the Russian diplomat Kislyak. According to three people familiar with the matter, one of the people on the transition team Flynn spoke with is Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner. Two people familiar with the matter said that another transition official referred to in the court documents is K.T. McFarland, who served as deputy national security adviser for five months and is now the nominee to become the next U.S. ambassador to Singapore. 
 
 According to the charges, Flynn lied to the FBI two days after he was sworn in as Trump’s national security adviser. 
 
 Since the Mueller probe began in May, Flynn is the first senior White House official to be charged in the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. He is also the first official to agree to fully cooperate with the inquiry. 
 
 A source close to the Trump administration told NBC News that the White House was “blindsided” by the announcement Friday Flynn’s guilty plea. 
 
 Kristen Welker reported from Washington. Max Burman reported from London.
– The Trump attorney who says he penned the "sloppy" tweet that some say indicates a possible obstruction of justice isn't done making headlines. John Dowd spoke to Axios' Mike Allen, scoffing at criticism of the tweet regarding Mike Flynn, which suggested Trump knew the former national security adviser had lied to the FBI before Trump canned James Comey. "The tweet did not admit obstruction," Dowd says. "That is an ignorant and arrogant assertion." Plus, the Constitution has Trump's back, per Dowd. "[The] president cannot obstruct justice because he is the chief law enforcement officer under [the Constitution's Article II] and has every right to express his view of any case," he claims. Newsweek notes it's not clear which section of Article II Dowd refers to, though it speculates on one part involving the president seeking the opinion "of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices." Allen notes that with this pronouncement, Trump's legal team is "setting the stage" to keep Trump insulated from obstruction of justice or collusion charges in the Russia probe—meaning, Allen speculates, that his lawyers may be nervous charges are coming down the pike. But one of Barack Obama's former counsels notes "it is certainly possible" for Trump to have obstructed justice, and Allen points out Richard Nixon's Articles of Impeachment were jump-started with the assertion that Nixon "has prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice." But whether Trump can or can't be held responsible for such a transgression may be moot, Allen adds. "The one thing everyone agrees on is that the House of Representatives, with its impeachment power, alone decides what is cause for removal from office," he writes. "For now, at least, the House is run by Republicans."