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Page Number: 13

8 

TRUMP v. VANCE 

Opinion of the Court 

Monroe offered to sit for a deposition and ultimately sub-
mitted answers to written interrogatories. 

Following  Monroe’s  lead,  his  successors  have  uniformly 
agreed to testify when called in criminal proceedings, pro-
vided they could do so at a time and place of their choosing. 
In 1875, President Grant submitted to a three-hour deposi-
tion in the criminal prosecution of a political appointee em-
broiled in a network of tax-evading whiskey distillers.  See 
1 R. Rotunda & J. Nowak, Constitutional Law §7.1(b)(ii), p.
996  (5th  ed.  2012)  (Rotunda  &  Nowak).    A  century  later, 
President  Ford’s  attempted  assassin  subpoenaed  him  to
testify  in  her  defense.  See  United  States  v.  Fromme,  405 
F. Supp. 578 (ED Cal. 1975).  Ford obliged—from a safe dis-
tance—in  the  first  videotaped  deposition  of  a  President. 
President Carter testified via the same means in the trial 
of  two  local  officials  who,  while  Carter  was  Governor  of 
Georgia,  had  offered  to  contribute  to  his  campaign  in  ex-
change  for  advance  warning  of  any  state  gambling  raids.
See Carter’s Testimony, on Videotape, Is Given to Georgia 
Gambling Trial, N. Y. Times, Apr. 20, 1978, p. A20 (Carter 
recounted  that  he  “rejected  the  proposition  instantly.”). 
Two years later, Carter gave videotaped testimony to a fed-
eral  grand  jury  investigating  whether  a  fugitive  financier 
had  entreated  the  White  House  to  quash  his  extradition
proceedings.  See  Rotunda  &  Nowak  §7.1(b)(vi),  at  997.
President Clinton testified three times, twice via deposition
pursuant to subpoenas in federal criminal trials of associ-
ates  implicated  during  the  Whitewater  investigation,  and 
once  by  video  for  a  grand  jury  investigating  possible  per-
jury.  See id., §7.1(c)(viii), at 1007–1008.

The bookend to Marshall’s ruling came in 1974 when the 
question he never had to decide—whether to compel the dis-
closure of official communications over the objection of the
President—came to a head.  That spring, the Special Pros-
ecutor appointed to investigate the break-in of the Demo-
cratic National Committee Headquarters at the Watergate