It’s one thing to say a sitting president can be civilly sued for personal capacity conduct, as the Court held in Clinton v. Jones. It’s quite another to say that a sitting president can be indicted for a crime. Or are they so different? The courts have never addressed this question. The Department of Justice (DOJ) in three Office of Legal Counsel memos (1974, 2000, and 2019) answered in the negative. Other lawyers and legal scholars disagree.

In addition to the more debated presidential powers discussed in the previous chapters of this book, the President can also exercise several less controversial powers. Among these powers are the power to seek the opinions of executive officers, the power to appoint ambassadors, federal judges, and other officers of the United States, and the right to provide Congress information on the state of the union.

When considering presidential power, presidential “ethics” concerns also are relevant. Here we address two aspects of this problem – financial and political conflicts of interest of the President.

Chapter 5 explores xiangchou as a materially and culturally embedded concept in the 2010s, which represented an ‘era of crises’ in China. The chapter frames crises as both the acute global COVID-19 pandemic, as well as through longer-term and more embedded ‘crises,’ categorized broadly as: the ’big city disease’, the existential crisis of meaninglessness, and the three-rural issue. Discursive analysis of various government text illustrates how different state organs can invoke the language of xiangchou to describe both a symptom of such crises as well as a response and potential remedy to these crises. Various case studies also demonstrate how feelings of homesickness and the inevitable separations from those ‘left behind’ can compel various forms of ‘rural return,’ but to varying effects and opportunities.

Corruption is an ancient problem. Edmund Burke, as a member of the English Parliament, denounced the corrupt influence on government by corporations, particularly the East India Company. After the 1773 Tea Act granted that company a monopoly on sale of tea in America, colonists dumped their tea into the Boston harbor, an event that became known as the Boston Tea Party. Americans in the past and now are deeply concerned with being governed by money.

Chapter 2 introduces the Iraqi diasporas in the UK and Sweden, their migration waves, and the sociopolitical reasons for leaving Iraq and migrating to each hostland. It highlights the importance of the socioeconomic profile of each diaspora, which affected their transnational connections to Iraq, and how they could involve themselves rebuilding Iraq. In the United Kingdom, political and religious elites, and upper- and middle-class professionals contributed to London being an oppositional hub for Shi’a Islamist Parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the Iraqi National Congress, and the Iraqi National Accord, as well as other liberal and leftist figures. The socioeconomic profiles of the UK diaspora also provided the diaspora with the material power and networks to influence hostland and international policymakers. Meanwhile in Sweden, the socioeconomic profile of the Swedish diaspora, made up of largely refugees and less-skilled individuals, affected its ability to contribute directly towards Iraq, redirecting mobilisation towards the diaspora in the formation years, and later, once settled, towards the hostland audience in the late 1990s. Mobilisation was channelled through Swedish civil society and in collaboration with civic groups and parties, reflecting Sweden’s tradition of politics through social movements.