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Profs and Pints DC presents: “Prosecuting the Former President,” a look at the criminal-law case against Donald Trump with constitutional law expert and ABC legal contributor Professor Kim Wehle of the University of Baltimore School of Law and American University’s Washington College of Law.
The week of August 8th was perhaps one of the gravest and most pivotal news weeks in the history of the American experiment. An unprecedented FBI search of the private estate of a former president, Donald Trump, turned up a trove of highly classified documents that had been ferreted out of the White House and withheld from federal agencies seeking their return. The search warrant said the Department of Justice was seeking evidence of espionage, obstruction of justice, and criminal handling of government records. Some critics of the search say prosecution of a president would be too damaging for American government to seriously contemplate, regardless of the circumstances.
How in the world did we get here? And what can be done to halt America’s slide toward authoritarianism, an outcome that some sides fear and claim to be working against?
Join us for an intimate conversation on this topic with Professor Wehle, who this fall will be teaching about the American political process at American University. With deep expertise in the separation of powers and vast experience communicating to national audiences, she is distinctly qualified to give a talk on the intersection between law and politics and will bring a uniquely commonsense approach to the stage.
She’ll discuss why President Trump’s possession of the documents, and his stonewalling when the FBI and DOJ sought their return via subpoena, is such a big deal. After all, it’s hard to fathom why Trump would have done this except to use those secret materials for his own personal gain. Were they shared with foreign adversaries? Neglectfully floated to whomever happened to be in Mar-a-Lago at the right place and time? Were actual human beings doing classified work for the U.S. government harmed or compromised as a result?
She also will explain and catalogue the failures of various guardrails built into our political system by the Constitution’s framers, and she’ll discuss why some presidential accountability is crucial to the survival of American democracy itself.
Professor Wehle has appeared on ABC, CNN, NPR, MSNBC, Fox News and other major media outlets and is a writer for publications like The Atlantic and Politico. She’s also the author of three books on civics basics, including How to Read the Constitution and Why, What You Need to Know About Voting and Why, and How to Think Like a Lawyer and Why. Her forthcoming book, due out in 2023, is on the presidential pardon power. (Advance tickets: $12. Doors: $15, or $13 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later. Please allow yourself time to place any orders and get seated and settled in.)
Image: Donald Trump at a 2016 campaign rally in Arizona. Photo by Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons.
