After the English Civil War, Charles I was accused of treason against England because he had used his power to pursue his personal interests rather than the good of the country.

The charge was based on actions

“carried on for the advancement and upholding of a personal interest of will, power, and pretended prerogative to himself and his family, against the public interest, common right, liberty, justice, and peace of the people of this nation.”

His trial lasted three day, and throughout the trial he refused to enter a plea.

“I would know by what power I am called hither, by what lawful authority…?”

It was his belief that no court had jurisdiction over a king because a king’s authority was bestowed by God.

“No earthly power can justly call me (who am your King) in question as a delinquent … this day’s proceeding cannot be warranted by God’s laws; for, on the contrary, the authority of obedience unto Kings is clearly warranted, and strictly commanded in both the Old and New Testament … for the law of this land, I am no less confident, that no learned lawyer will affirm that an impeachment can lie against the King, they all going in his name: and one of their maxims is, that the King can do no wrong … the higher House is totally excluded; and for the House of Commons, it is too well known that the major part of them are detained or deterred from sitting … the arms I took up were only to defend the fundamental laws of this kingdom against those who have supposed my power hath totally changed the ancient government.”

But the court rejected the idea of sovereign immunity, the belief that a head if state cannot commit a legal wrong and is immune from civil suit or criminal prosecution, because

“the King of England was not a person, but an office whose every occupant was entrusted with a limited power to govern ‘by and according to the laws of the land and not otherwise’.”

Rule by law, not by God.

A king was not above the law and could face prosecution if he acted in spite of law putting his own interests above those of the people. Actions did not become lawful because he took them.

Charles was holding the same opinion Richard Nixon did when he justified his actions saying,

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Neither of these two fared all that well.

While President Nixon was being investigated, and just a year before he resigned, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel determined that a criminal case against the president

“would interfere with the President’s unique official duties, most of which cannot be performed by anyone else.”

This meant that criminal charges would have to wait until he left office (remember his successor pardoned him so the country could move on), leaving impeachment as the only redress so long as the statute of limitations was not reached while he was sitting in the Oval Office allowing him to get away with known crime.

The policy was called “Amenability of the President, Vice President, and other Civil Officers to Federal Criminal Prosecution while in Office” and includes,

 “To wound him [the president] by a criminal proceeding is to hamstring the operation of the whole governmental apparatus, both in foreign and domestic affairs. The spectacle of an indicted President still trying to serve as Chief Executive boggles the imagination.”

An October 2000 memo titled “A Sitting President’s Amenability to Indictment and Criminal Prosecution” decided the 1973 memo’s reasoning remains true, and

“subsequent developments in the law validate both the analytical framework applied and the conclusions reached at that time.”

The Constitution does not address the possibility of criminal charges against a sitting president, but does assert that the president can be impeached for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” with the House of Representatives having the power of impeachment.

As Mueller explained, while leaving congress with a list of things it c\should look into,

“The Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.”

Charles I could have benefited from Nixon’s DOJ.