When the lawfare against President Trump was at its peak, do you remember some pundits saying, “You can’t arrest a sitting President”? Well, evidently you can. It has been done–only once–but it was done.

According to the Smithsonian Magazine in an article posted on March 31, 2023:

When police officer William Henry West pulled over Ulysses S. Grant for speeding in a horse-drawn carriage on the streets of Washington, D.C. in 1872, he issued the president a warning. The very next day, however, West caught Grant in the midst of another race with his friends.

Looking like “a schoolboy who had been caught in a guilty act by his teacher,” as West recalled to the Evening Star in 1908, Grant reportedly asked, “Do you think, officer, that I was violating the speed laws?” Answering in the affirmative, West replied, “I am very sorry, Mr. President, to have to do it, for you are the chief of the nation, and I am nothing but a policeman, but duty is duty, sir, and I will have to place you under arrest.”

I am not in any way suggesting that President Trump should be arrested–he has never been found guilty of a crime. President Grant was obviously breaking the law. It is interesting to me that politics in Washington, D.C., at that time was honest enough for the arrest of the President to happen.