Court rules ‘Presidents are not kings’

Even the most senior White House aides must testify, if ordered to by subpoena.

A federal court has ordered former White House Counsel Don McGahn to comply with a Congressional subpoena. The ruling explicitly states that “Presidents are not kings” and that “it is a core tenet of this Nation’s founding that the powers of a monarch must be split between the branches of the government to prevent tyranny.”

The ruling also finds that the President does not have any power to order anyone to disobey a subpoena. Such orders may, in fact, constitute criminal acts.

Read the full 120-page federal court ruling by Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Posted by Joseph Robertson

Joseph is Executive Director of Citizens' Climate International. He represents Citizens’ Climate in the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition, the UNFCCC negotiations, and other UN processes. He is the lead strategist supporting the Acceleration Dialogues (diplomatic climate-solutions roundtables) and Resilience Intel—an effort to move the world to 100% climate-smart finance. He is Senior Advisor Sustainable Finance for the EAT Foundation, where he served as Interim Director for the Food System Economics Commission, during its start-up phase from April through November 2020, and now serves on the Secretariat of the Good Food Finance Network. He is founder of Geoversiv and a lead contributor to the Earth Intelligence podcast. He publishes a free newsletter at LivingFutures.net

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