'White House Arrest?' Legal Experts Disagree About Prosecuting A President

The debate over whether the president of the United States can be charged with a crime is as old as the country itself.

comes from the diary of a Pennsylvania senator, who recorded "a heated debate on this very issue" in September 1789, said Hofstra University Law School professor Eric Freedman. "For those who believe The words of the Constitution aren't much help either. It talks about impeachment, removing a president from office. But the document is vague on the issue of whether a president can be indicted while he holds the office. "We tend to talk about it as one big on-off switch," explained Harvard Law School professor Andrew Crespo. "But, really, the question ought to be: can he be investigated, can he be indicted, can he be made to stand trial, can he be sentenced? And the burdens imposed by each of those steps of the process are different." And so, that debate has raged.