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In September 2019, we received numerous requests from readers for the veracity of the statements that US President Donald Trump admitted to criminal acts and said, "My crimes can not be investigated so much. that I am president, "or that his lawyers a legal argument to that effect.
On September 19, Vanity Fair published an article titled "Trump: My Crimes Can not Be Investigated while I'm President," reporting that the president's lawyers had developed a " new legal argument "to prevent the involuntary release of their clients' federal tax returns. Vanity Fair summarized this argument as follows: "It is illegal to investigate a president in office for all the crimes he allegedly committed."
The article continued:
"In a lawsuit today against Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who recently assigned eight years of Trump's tax returns to appear to determine whether the Trump Organization had falsified commercial documents relating to payments by Stormy Daniels, the president's lawyers argue that such a request is unconstitutional, The founding fathers felt that sitting presidents should not be subject to the criminal process.
"The drafters of our Constitution have understood that state prosecutors and local prosecutors would be tempted to investigate the president in a criminal manner in order to advance their career and their political goals," the trial said. "And they also understood that defending against these actions would distract the president from his constitutional obligations."
Vanity Fair's article does not quote Trump or any of its representatives or lawyers admitting any criminal prosecution on his part and assigns the legal argument in question to the president's lawyers (and not to the president himself) . The article also made it clear that the following statement: "It is unlawful to investigate crimes committed by a president in office", summed up what Trump's lawyers had written, rather than a direct quote from their documents.
Despite all this nuance, the title of the article had the effect of misleading those who had not carefully read the article itself. "Trump: My crimes can not be investigated while I'm president" has clearly created the false impression, among many readers, that Trump himself (as opposed to his lawyers) had said (rather than argue that crimes can not be investigated while I'm president "and in doing so, Trump or his attorneys acknowledged the president's reprehensible behavior.
Trump did not say that or his lawyers. Nor did his lawyers present any argument that could be summarized in this way because, in presenting the argument they made, his lawyers had admitted no criminal action by Trump.
Unfortunately, the misleading nature of the title of the article has been fully confirmed. The Twitter account @stonecold2050 tweeted a link to Vanity Fair's article, adding, "Trump said:" my crimes can not be investigated while I'm president of the states United States "." My crimes ", what's he just said? "
Trump said, "I can not investigate my crimes while I'm president of the United States"
"My crimes" What's he just said?#ImpeachTrump
https://t.co/c3iQ86DThG– Stone (@ stonecold2050) September 20, 2019
This widely shared tweet was one of many posts on social media that clearly showed an understanding of the article's title, namely that Trump had himself explicitly admitted to having committed crimes.
The Facebook page on the left, The Other 98%, also conveyed this false impression by borrowing from @ stonecold2050's tweet:
Comments posted on Vanity Fair's own Facebook page and in reply clearly show that a considerable number of readers, without any editorial mediation, understood that the title meant that Trump himself had admitted to having committed a criminal act and declared: "My crimes can not be the President."
Analysis
The passages quoted in the Vanity Fair article are excerpts from a civil complaint filed by Trump against New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance, filed September 19 before the US District Court South District of New York. New York.
In his complaint, Trump's lawyers claimed that Vance's efforts to obtain the president's income tax returns by subpoenaing his accountants to Mazars constituted an unconstitutional effort to open a criminal investigation into a president-in-office. :
"Since the Mazars subpoena attempts to criminally investigate a sitting president, it is unconstitutional. This court should declare him invalid and order the execution until the president is no longer in office. "
To that extent, Vanity Fair's article summed up the argument as follows: "It is illegal to investigate crimes committed by a sitting president", although it is worth noting that the occupants of the House -Blanche can (and have been) the subject of an investigation under a federal law civil prosecution if these proceedings are unrelated to their official acts as president.
(For example, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal arose out of an investigation into Bill Clinton's private life, following a civil lawsuit brought against him by Paula Jones while Clinton was president.)
Trump's lawyers ask the district court to declare the subpoena invalid and issue an injunction preventing the DA's office from enforcing the order and Mazars from complying with it. To this extent, Trump is also pursuing the accounting firm.
As of September 23, Trump's legal team had filed a complaint, an urgent interim order petition and an interim injunction, a proposed order granting the petition, and a memorandum supporting the petition. request. Among these dozens of pages of legal arguments, none of Trump's lawyers admitted or admitted that his client had been involved in criminal acts.
On the contrary, they argued that the US Constitution prohibits the AD from conducting a criminal investigation of Trump until he is no longer president, thus forcing the district court to temporarily suspend DA's efforts to obtain Trump's personal federal tax returns by subpoenaing his accountants.
As such, the title of Vanity Fair's article (as opposed to the article itself) was grossly misleading. Although it does not explicitly assign a statement to Trump, the title's wording creates this false generalized impression. Trump did not say, "My crimes can not be investigated while I'm president," nor did he make any similar statement in which he admitted to having acted criminally, and his lawyers also did not advance argument involving the admission of criminal acts on the part of the president.
Subsequent social media posts that said "You can not investigate my crimes while I'm president" were downright wrong in Trump.
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