I think probably, you know, from my perspective, the folks who say a sitting president cannot be indicted have the better of the argument that the president can't be indicted - put, you know, through a criminal trial while he is president - and that the proper way to do it is to impeach him first, remove him, and then seek criminal prosecution.

Even though Mr. Trump can give his campaign as much of his own money as he wants to, he can't ask other people to front the money for him and promise to pay them back later without reporting the arrangement in a timely fashion to the Federal Election Commission.

I like doing scholarship for its own sake.

I never want to be in the business of predicting what the U.S. Supreme Court will do.

At times, President Trump has behaved far worse than Nixon did.

I didn't go to fancy schools or come from money or from a family that valued law or public speaking in any shape or form.

The special-counsel regulations were drafted at a unique historical moment. We were approaching the end of President Bill Clinton's second term, and no one knew who would be elected president the next year.

Trump abuses every privilege in the same way. It's kind of like King George. Take a legal concept and then stretch it beyond all recognition, and that's what you have Trump doing.

Prosecutors use the conspiracy doctrine to punish two or more people who merely agree to commit a criminal act. They don't even have to actually perform the act; they just need to have agreed to do so.

The public has every right to see Robert S. Mueller III's conclusions. Absolutely nothing in the law or the regulations prevents the report from becoming public. Indeed, the relevant sources of law give Attorney General P. William Barr all the latitude in the world to make it public.

We have learned Trump's disregard for the truth, and the rule of law is real.

Every time a president invokes executive privilege, there are three relevant audiences he has to think about: the courts, Congress, and the public.

I can tell you that standard D.O.J. protocol is that you let official acts speak for themselves. You don't go and spin your action. For example, when I ran the Solicitor General's office, there would be all sorts of times when the litigants would make something up, and we would just never comment to the press. It is not what we do.

One thing we know about government after the New Deal is that checks and balances through whistle-blowing is terrible policy.

Even if I might say to myself, 'I don't need health insurance. I won't get sick,' the fact is, as human beings with mortality, we are going to get sick, and it's unpredictable when.

Appointing special counsel Robert Mueller to probe Russian meddling in the 2016 election (and any possible ties to President Trump's campaign) was the only choice the Justice Department had. This is the best way to deal with the conflicts and potential conflicts of interest these matters posed.

Americans can tolerate some secrecy, particularly when it is rooted in protection of the public's interests. But when the claims appear to hide wrongdoing, they begin to curdle.

When it comes to investigating a president, the special counsel regulations I had the privilege of drafting in 1998-99 say that such inquiries have one ultimate destination: Congress.

Everything having to do with President Trump and Russia, whether it is Mr. Trump's demand for an investigation into the investigation by the special counsel Robert Mueller, or whether Mr. Trump will testify, requires an answer to one essential background question: Can Mr. Mueller seek to indict the president?

Sometimes momentous government action leaves everyone uncertain about the next move.

If you are looking for someone to break the mold, the last guy you look to is Robert Mueller.

In 2006, I argued and won Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, a Supreme Court case that struck down President George W. Bush's use of military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay.

I think that the terms of the Affordable Care Act do give the states a fair amount of wiggle room and to do things as they see fit. The Affordable Care Act was not designed as some sort of one-size-fits-all solution from Washington. There's lots of discretion given to the states.

Institutionalizing dissent in our agencies moves us toward a healthier democracy and helps fulfill our founders' vision.

Our constitutional system is defined by a balance between the public's need for transparency and the government's need to have a zone of secrecy around decision making. Both are important, yet they are mutually exclusive.

The special counsel regulations were written to provide the public with confidence that justice was done.

Obstruction of justice requires a corrupt intent.

If I got my hands on the Mueller report, the thing I'd want to see is what are the reasons why Barr made the conclusion about obstruction of justice that he did? Was it because of the facts? If so, why didn't he try and interview Trump to learn all the facts?

Appellate advocacy, particularly at the Supreme Court, is really intimate. I mean, you're just a few feet away from the Chief Justice. You know, if you're sweating, they see you.

It simply cannot be that the president can name his own temporary attorney general to supervise an investigation in which he and his family have a direct, concrete interest.

In some cases, Justice Department leaders can supervise investigations despite having personal knowledge about the entities involved.

I'm blessed with the fact that I don't need a tremendous amount of sleep.

I generally sleep about four hours.

My wife is a doctor at a veteran's hospital.

I think there is a role for courts in a variety of areas, but the notion that we can allow a federal judge to run our greenhouse gas policy strikes me as preposterous.

Traditionally, in America, we have accountability as kind of a key feature of each branch of government in some way. So, you know, you obviously have to run for office. Or if you're a judge, you've got to be nominated by political officials and so on.

Firing the prosecutor who's about to get you or your campaign is kind of quintessential obstruction of justice.

I used to walk down the Justice Department on the fifth floor and see all those portraits of legendary attorneys general, Griffin Bell and Robert Jackson and people like that. Bill Barr will not be like that.

Trump knows he's facing some pretty strong criminal liability when he leaves office, one way or another. Even if a sitting president can't be indicted, he's got to know his future looks like it's behind bars unless he cuts some sort of deal with the prosecutors.

Our Supreme Court has been very clear that the government can't just simply say something and make it so.

The Supreme Court should televise its proceedings.

I don't want to get into predicting how Judge Gorsuch would vote on the Supreme Court as a Justice Gorsuch. But I will say that those of us who've seen him in court as a judge, those of us who have worked with him as I have on a appellate rules committee, understand that this is a man who brings independence and integrity to the job.

The idea that the special counsel regulations, which were written to provide the public with confidence against a coverup, would empower an attorney general to restrict disclosure in an investigation of the president is a nonstarter.

I served in two administrations very high up in the Justice Department.

Executive branch rules require sensitive classified information to be discussed in specialized facilities that are designed to guard against the possibility that officials are being targeted for surveillance outside of the workplace.

The hospital room of a cabinet official is exactly the type of target ripe for surveillance by a foreign power.

The Solicitor General is responsible for overseeing appellate litigation on behalf of the United States and with representing the United States in the Supreme Court.

Barr has thrown himself in with Trump in ways unbecoming to the nation's highest legal official. His conduct in trying to clear Trump is of a piece with his baseless attacks on 'spying' by the FBI and his defiance of Congress's subpoenas.

Trump and Barr both insist that he has been cleared, but that's not what more than 1,000 former federal prosecutors who read the Mueller report say: The evidence described in the report would lead to an indictment of anyone else in the country. If that's right, we simply cannot have a president who remains in office because of a technicality.

If Barr wants to keep defending Trump, he should take a page from one of his predecessors, Henry Stanbery, who stepped down as attorney general to serve as President Andrew Johnson's impeachment counsel. Stanbery, notably, tried to come back as attorney general after the impeachment proceedings concluded. The Senate did not confirm him.