Trump's emergency powers worry some senators, legal experts

day he declared COVID-19 pandemic a national emergency, President Donald Trump made a cryptic offhand remark.

“I have right to do a lot of things that people don’t even kw about," he said at White House.

Trump wasn’t just crowing. Dozens of statutory authorities become available to any president when national emergencies are declared. y are rarely used, but Trump last month stunned legal experts and ors when he claimed — mistakenly — that he has “total” authority over goverrs in easing COVID-19 guidelines.

That prompted 10 senators to look into how sweeping Trump believes his emergency powers are.

y have asked to see this administration's Presidential Emergency Action Documents, or PEADs. little-kwn, classified documents are essentially planning papers..

documents don’t give a president authority beyond what's in Constitution. But y outline what powers a president believes that Constitution gives him to deal with national emergencies. senators think documents would provide m a window into how this White House interprets presidential emergency powers.

“Somebody needs to look at se things,” Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said in a telephone interview. “This is a case where president can declare an emergency and n say ’Because re’s an emergency, I can do this, this and this.’”

King, seven Democrats and one Republican sent a letter late last month to acting national intelligence director Richard Grenell asking to be briefed on any existing PEADs. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., wrote a similar letter to Attorney General William Barr and White House counsel Pat Cipollone.

“ concern is that re could be actions taken that would violate individual rights under Constitution," such as limiting due process, unreasonable search and seizure and holding individuals without cause, King said.

“I’m merely speculating. It may be that we get se documents and re’s thing untoward in ir checks and balances and everything is above board and reasonable.''

Joshua Geltzer, visiting professor of law at Georgetown University, said re is a push to take a look at se documents because re is rising distrust for Trump administration's legal interpretations in a way he hasn't seen in his lifetime.

most publicized example was Trump’s decision last year to declare security situation along U.S.-Mexico border a national emergency. That decision allowed him to take up to $3.6 billion from military construction projects to finance wall construction beyond miles that lawmakers had been willing to fund. Trump’s move skirted authority of Congress, which by law has power to spend money in nation’s wallet.

“I worry about or things he might call an emergency,” Geltzer said. “I think around election itself in vember — that’s where re seems to be a lot of potential for mischief with this president.”

lawmakers made ir request just days after Trump made his startling claim on April 13 that he had authority to force states to reopen for business amid pandemic.

“When somebody’s president of United States, authority is total,” Trump said, causing a backlash from some goverrs and legal experts. Trump later tweeted that while some people say it's goverrs, t president's decision, "Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect.”

Trump later backtracked on his claim of “total" authority and agreed that states have upper hand in deciding when to end ir lockdowns. But it was just latest from a president who has been stretching existing statutory authorities “to, if t beyond, ir breaking point," said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at University of Texas.

Questions about Trump's PEADs went unanswered by Justice Department, National Security Counsel and Office of Director of National Intelligence.

Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of a national security program at Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, said PEADs have t been subject to congressional oversight for decades. She estimates that re are 50 to 60 of se documents, which include draft proclamations, executive orders and proposed legislation that could be swiftly introduced to “assert broad presidential authority” in national emergencies.

She said Eisenhower administration had PEADs outlining how it might respond to a possible Soviet nuclear attack. According to Brennan Center, PEADs issued up through 1970s included detention of U.S. citizens suspected of being subversives, warrantless searches and seizures and imposition of martial law.

“A Department of Justice memorandum from Lyndon B. Johnson administration discusses a presidential emergency action document that would impose censorship on news sent abroad,” Goitein wrote in an op-ed with lawyer Andrew Boyle published last month in New York Times.

" memo tes that while ‘express statutory authority’ exists for such a measure, ‘it can be argued that se actions would be legal in aftermath of a devastating nuclear attack based on president’s constitutional powers to preserve national security.”’

Goitein said she especially worries about any orders having to do with military deployment, including martial law.

“You can imagine a situation where he (Trump) engineers a crisis that leads to domestic violence, which n becomes a pretext for martial law,” said Goitein, who insists she's simply playing out worst-case scenarios. "What I worry about is extreme interpretation under which he asserts authority to declare martial law and take over all functions of government, including running elections."

She also wonders if re is a PEAD outlining steps president could take to respond to a serious cyberattack. Would president aggressively interpret telecommunications law and flip an internet kill switch, or restrain domestic internet traffic? she asks.

Bobby Chesney, associate dean at University of Texas School of Law, said some fears might be exaggerated because while Trump makes off--cuff assertions of authority far beyond past presidents, he doesn't necessarily follow up with action.

Says Chesney: “His actions don’t match rhetoric always — or even often.”