Can't Cant

Beware of absolutes.

   "You can't indict a sitting president." So says Rudy Giuliani, legal advisor to Donald Trump.
   While it is true that no sitting president has ever been indicted, and the federal Department of Justice has a policy of not trying, it does not follow that it can never happen.
   The Constitution provides that a president can be impeached, tried, convicted and removed from office by Congress. The Constitution also specifies that this does not prevent any federal official from being indicted after removal.
   So can a federal official, up to and including a president, be indicted while in office? To claim that a sitting president cannot be indicted puts the president above the law, at least until he or she leaves office. And if the delay is long enough a statute of limitations kicks in and the president becomes immune from prosecution.
   Unless, perhaps, charges are filed and prosecution is delayed until after a president's term of office expires. Meanwhile, a president's successor can immediately issue a pardon, even before charges are filed.
   That's what happened in the case of Richard Nixon, who faced impeachment but resigned before that happened. His successor, Gerald Ford, then pardoned Nixon for any offenses he may have committed. It's odd that no offenses were publicly disclosed, so technically, Nixon was never charged with anything, nor indicted, much less convicted of anything in any court. Therefore, he must be assumed innocent because he was never charged or convicted of anything.

   Now back to the present. As for indicting a sitting president, there's always a first time for everything. It appears that the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller is turning up a wide variety of things that could be grist for criminal charges in addition to impeachable offenses.
   Moreover, it may even happen that some charges are made at the state level, in which case no presidential pardon is possible.
   By the way, the dictionary definition of "cant" is "hypocritical and sanctimonious talk, typically of a moral, religious or political nature." It can also refer to slang or jargon, or to "talk or beg in a whining or singsong manner."
   Make of that what you will.