No. of Recommendations: 3
You can certainly come up with fanciful scenarios where the answer is obvious
I don't think we have to get too fanciful with Trump. Maybe ask the AG to tell the country there was widespread fraud in an election when there isn't. Then let that AG resign and ask the replacement acting AG to do the same thing.
That ask is inconsistent with the AG's oath. It would not be supporting and defending the Constitution to lie to the general public about election fraud in an attempt to change the result of an election. The Constitution lays out the framework for elections, but the foundation of that framework is that the elections need to be free, fair, and followed. Saying an election was not fair, when it is in fact fair, is a dereliction of your oath of office. It goes against the foundational principles of the Constitution itself.
Of course, most of the time asking the AG to do something consistent with the President's policies is going to be perfectly legal and in accordance with their respective oaths of office. And that is fine. If a President wanted to prioritize deportations over, say, enforcing tax laws, that's fine. Like every other part of government, there are limited resources to do the job, and it's not possible to do absolutely everything that falls within a cabinet department's purview. So priority decisions have to be made. (Hey, that sounds familiar, doesn't it??)
Perhaps the issue isn't being framed correctly. A mostly independent DOJ has been a norm. But I don't think that any DOJ has been completely independent of the President. They all follow the President's lead to some extent. But of all the cabinet departments, DOJ may be the one most in need of a leader with the willingness to stand up to the President and say "no" out of loyalty to the Constitution over loyalty to the President.
--Peter
