Who Can Arrest The President?

 This really needs to be read by everyone. It's a question posed at  The Straight Dope, and, I think it should be mandatory for all U.S. citizens to know just who has the authority.

Another issue raised by the conviction of a sitting president is pardon. Can the president pardon himself? Once again, there is no clear answer in the Constitution. Amar says a sitting president cannot pardon himself; ex-White House counsel John Dean says, in effect, "why not?"

While no president has ever pardoned himself, the law supports the president's authority to do so. Scholarly inquiry into the subject was provoked first by fear that Richard Nixon would pardon himself to escape Watergate; later by thought that George H. W. Bush would do so because of the Iran-Contra grand jury; and most recently by concern about Bill Clinton's problem of a possible post-Presidency indictment and trial. And while a few scholars have concluded that the president cannot pardon himself, many more believe that he can.

There are a couple of international implications here too. What I've said so far applies to arrest and trial of the president in the United States. What if he's visiting another country?
First, as a matter of international law, officers from one country cannot arrest someone in another country. To do so is considered a violation of the asylum country's sovereignty. To be sure, many courts have concluded that the right to complain about the violation belongs to the asylum state and not an individual defendant. Under U.S. law a defendant who is illegally arrested can usually still be prosecuted. So if the president left the country, the U.S. could retrieve him for prosecution, knowing that if the asylum country complained, we'd have an international incident on our hands.
If we decided to comply with international law, we could try to extradite him, assuming the U.S. had an extradition treaty with the asylum country. Most extradition treaties exclude political crimes, though, so depending on the charge, this approach might not work. In that case the United States Attorneys' Manual helpfully lists the following fallback options: requesting expulsion or deportation from the asylum country (called rendition), deportation from a third country (if the fugitive is dumb enough to leave the asylum country for one with less favorable extradition policies), lures ("A lure involves using a subterfuge to entice a criminal defendant to leave a foreign country so that he or she can be arrested in the United States, in international waters or airspace, or in a third country for subsequent extradition, expulsion, or deportation to the United States. Lures can be complicated schemes or they can be as simple as inviting a fugitive by telephone to a party in the United States"), red Interpol notices (a sort of international arrest warrant), revocation of U.S. passport (which will often result in deportation), and foreign prosecution.
One problem with foreign prosecution is head of state and head of government immunity. Persons holding either post are immune from liability or arrest while in office under international law. Once out of office, they can be sued or prosecuted for their private acts, but remain immune for their official acts. In the Pinochet case, the UK House of Lords reviewed the law of official immunity and concluded that international crimes are not official acts. This is the plight of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who

was visited by the police in the Ritz Hotel in Paris and handed a warrant, issued by Judge Roger LeLoire, requesting his testimony in the matter of disappeared French citizens in Pinochet's Chile. Kissinger chose to leave town rather than appear at the Palais de Justice as requested. He has since been summoned as a witness by senior magistrates in Chile and Argentina who are investigating the international terrorist network that went under the name "Operation Condor" and that conducted assassinations, kidnappings, and bombings in several countries.

So writes Christopher Hitchens in an article published on Slate.com in 2002. Hitchens says, "It is known that there are many countries to which he cannot travel at all, and it is also known that he takes legal advice before traveling anywhere." A former president could find himself in a similar situation.
In sum, whether the president can be prosecuted prior to impeachment remains controversial. After impeachment, the president can definitely be prosecuted in the U.S. Even in another country, the president could be prosecuted for acts that weren't part of his job or violated international criminal law.

Source: Straight Dope Staff Report: Who has the power to arrest the President?

 

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