Gabriel Mayer
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Did the US Founding Fathers Miss Something?

The Muller Report is Coming. Here’s What to Expect, ran a recent headline in the New York Times

The proposition that the Mueller report will likely form the basis for further criminal prosecutions is encouraging, but the notion of Presidential immunity from prosecution makes it less appealing.

While the courts have been somewhat ambiguous regarding the prosecutability of a sitting President, the current situation has led to a Presidency that leads without fear.

Let’s consider the upcoming presidential elections in 2020. An ordinary citizen would face justice and if convicted, he would be out of the running. But a sitting president with similar circumstances could run for re-election and continue to keep an injustice by virtue of re-election.

In a country where many states abolish the right to vote upon criminal conviction for ordinary persons, a sitting President enjoys to a wide degree the supposition of immunity from prosecution. By running for a second term, a potentially criminal President gets to keep this unfair advantage unavailable to any other candidate. Congress needs to look at this loophole that appears to give a President a special advantage by running for re-election.

While the US Constitution, penned nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, provided a number of” inalienable rights it was less specific in detail as regards the right to vote as well as preferential treatment for a President.

Through the years, a number of court decisions led us to where we are today. The current situation is mournfully defective and needs to be fixed. The US as a country may well be going down the drain when executive privilege and Presidential immunity are comparable to the equivalent of a Mafia boss may not be prosecuted as long as he remains a Mafia boss.

About the Author
Born in Romania to Holocaust survivor parents, Dr. Gabriel Mayer reached the US, after his family escaped Communism, reaching Italy, and as refugees, was supported by the Jewish Agency. He grew up in New York and attended college and medical school in Boston, at Boston University. He spent the first half of his working life as a medical doctor, professor, clinician and researcher in the USA [Professorships at University of Florida and Boston University medical schools]. A distinguished accomplishment of Dr. Mayer and his team was the introduction of thrombolytic therapy to treat acute myocardial infarction; this was the first team in the world to publish research based on clinical work. These procedures have lasted until the present and have saved millions of lives. In 2013 he began his studies at the University of Haifa, earning back-to-back MA degrees in Holocaust Studies and Israel Studies. Currently, he is focused on Judaism, and Jewish personhood/peoplehood and the Diaspora and Israeli discourse as driven by academic and philanthropical energies. For two years (2015 & 2016) he served as Head Historian of Martef Hashoa Museum, Jerusalem.
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