Can the President Fire the Postmaster General? (Lesson in Constitutional Law)

so I'm going to give you a lesson on constitutional law today in this video and I'm going to do it in the context of a political issue which is what I like to do it's it's one of the things I do uh when I teach constitutional law at the college level we discussed the constitution in in context of political issues of the day now the question here that we're going to discuss is does the president have authority to fire the Postmaster General and I'll tell you what led to this uh discussion here today um I will tell you I am in a bad mood you ever ever uh get in one of these bad moods you just um one of these days you probably shouldn't have gotten out of bed I got a horrible night's sleep last night and uh I have no patience for morons and uh my mistake being in that frame of mind was going on Twitter which is basically a sea of morons an endless ocean of stupid people and um I I U read a tweet from what's her name Joyce Vance and she linked to an article about the Postmaster General this this de Joy guy I can't remember his first name uh this is a guy appointed by Trump he was playing all kinds of games games with the mail in ballots last year and it looks you know in 2020 and it looks like he's doing the same thing uh playing games to try to rig the S the system in favor of Donald Trump and I I commented to her tweet saying um you know Joe Biden had four years to fire this guy why didn't he do it and predictably or should have been predicted um I got uh an endless number of stupid people responding to me that Joe Biden you know defending Biden saying he can't fire the Postmaster General and they started linking to articles and all this kind of garbage so let's talk about that now I'll begin with one of these articles and uh I'll read a little bit of this so that you understand where these people are getting this kind of thing from and I you know I've heard it at the time um of the last election and thereafter people saying you know Biden needed to fire this person and of course B Biden didn't fire them and information came out about why he supposedly couldn't fire him so let me read you this here's the question is the Postmaster General a cabinet position that's how they frame this in this article in 1971 the United States Post Office Department was reorganized in into the US Postal Service a special agency independent of the executive branch that is not funded by Appropriations the Postmaster General is not a member of the cabinet and is not in line to be president the position is selected by the Board of Governors of the Postal Service whose members are appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate they serve 7ear terms the postmaster General's office has no fixed term meaning that the joy can serve as as long as the Board of Governors approves the article goes on to say that the president can't fire the Postmaster General only this Board of Governors can because it was this Board of Governors that appointed him and uh anyway this is um constitutionally speaking utterly utterly absurd yes that is how the Postmaster General is appointed but the fact remains that the Postmaster General is an appointee within the Executive Branch the president is the executive branch per article two of the Constitution the president can fire any damn appointee in the executive branch no matter how that person was appointed statute or not the president's ability Now understand this this is very basic constit constitutional law the president's ability to exercise let me put it this way a president's constitutional Authority you know Authority granted to the president by the Constitution cannot be altered by Congress or any regulation okay if you want to alter a president's constitutional Authority then you need to amend the Constitution Congress cannot pass a statute and take away Powers constitutional authority of the president if the president is given Authority Under the Constitution Congress cannot pass a law taking away any of that Authority now inherent in the president's constitutional Authority is to fire is the ability to fire anyone he wants in the executive branch any appointees in the executive branch that is a core constit tional power of the president so Congress can't take that away by Statute so yes Congress passed this law setting up this board where whereby the Postmaster General is uh appointed but that does not strip the president of the power to fire him if he wants to I'll give you another example to prove this point to you Congress also set up a system where the FBI Direct ctor supposedly can't be fired by presidents they are appointed to 10-year terms you know uh most appointees in the executive branch aren't given specific terms of office they just serve at the president's pleasure right well they wanted to take the FBI director out of the political part of the you know the executive branch right they didn't want whether or not the director of the FBI keeps his job to be you know dependent on the political whims of the president so they specifically by Statute created it so that the FBI director is appointed to a 10-year term and supposedly presidents can't fire the FBI director during that 10 years you got to wait for his 10 years to be up and then you can appoint someone else well if you'll recall Donald Trump one of the first things he did when he came to power was he fired the FBI director James Comey remember that um and he was able to do it you know why because that statute is meaningless the FBI director is part of the executive branch and the president has full control full authority to fire anyone in the executive branch he damn well pleases no statute can take that Authority away from him so Trump that 10year term statute for the FBI director didn't do a damn thing to prevent Donald Trump from firing him okay same thing with the Postmaster General I don't care what fraking statutes you pass doesn't matter the Postmaster General is part of the executive branch and the president can fire him okay it doesn't matter how he was appointed whether he's appointed to a fixed term or not it it doesn't matter he's he's an officer under the executive branch and he can be fired by the president and let me read you another comment I got to to make another point about this this person wrote to me your comments mean nothing because Nixon cut the post office loose from the government okay this is referring to that 1971 statute that Nixon uh signed into law people are I told you I'm in a bad mood today people are so stupid all right um the post office was created by wait for it the Constitution the post office is actually in the con stitution Nixon can't take the post office out of the government or as this person said cut it Loose from the government Nixon can't do that Congress can't do that Trump can't do that Biden can't no president no Congress can just cut the post office loose from the government it's a creation of the Constitution the only way to dissolve the post office or to take it out of the control of the government is by Constitutional Amendment you have to amend the Constitution to take the post office out of the Constitution uh out of the government apparently this who responded to me thinks that the post office is a private company the post office is not a private company it is an office under the executive branch and another comment I I read was uh about how it doesn't get funded by the government it's supposed to be um self-sufficient that's part of this SE this 1971 law of course the federal government is constantly having to bail out the post office because the post office uh is not self-sufficient it cannot sustain itself with the revenue it generates so every once in a while there's a big debate in Congress about how much money to spend bailing out the post office right uh but the fact that it even if it were self-sufficient and didn't receive any federal funds that is completely irrelevant it is still an office under the executive branch of the government like I said you want to change that then you need to amend the Constitution unless and until you do the post office is still will remain uh an agency under the Executive Branch the Postmaster General is an officer within the executive branch and as such can be fired by the president anytime he wants and another thing yeah I read this several times too that the post office is quote um an independent agency here's a point of constitutional law for you that's not a thing there is no such thing as an independent agency under our constitution or within our government that is not a thing the entire federal government is divided into three branches right Congress the president and the courts any office within the government Must Fall by definition under one of those three branches of government there is no such thing as independent agencies outside of the control of one of those three branches of government that's not a freaking thing okay and the post office is not an independent agency regardless of how the Postmaster General is appointed whether by the president or by a board regardless of whether or not the post office receives Federal funding doesn't matter it's part of the government it's it's in the Constitution and it's in the executive branch per the constitution of the government and under complete control of the president of the United States and you'll hear this talk about independent agencies the other context in which you hear this talked about a lot is the Department of Justice because you know how Donald Trump completely politicize the Department of Justice and Promises to do that on steroids if he's reelected and to use use the Department of Justice to go after his political enemies and all of this stuff and there's this you know this talk and it's been going on for for decades really about how the Department of Justice is an independent agency you'll hear that a lot of times that's just constitutionally not true right again the Department of Justice falls in the is in the executive branch the Attorney General is a subordinate to the president of the United States now we would like for the Department of Justice and the and and how they operate to be completely removed from politics and for the president to have no involvement in the day-to-day um you know management of cases in the Department of Justice that's how it should be that that's how it should be you know that's what we want but if a president wanted to get involved in a in a case he could con constitutionally speaking he absolutely could he completely controls the Department of Justice he can direct the Attorney General um to do anything he wants and now according to the Supreme Court he can direct the Attorney General to do things that are illegal and be completely immune for it but putting that aside the Department of Justice is not an independent branch of government yes we would like it to act independently in the prosecution of cases but it is not an independent agency and that's part of the problem because if Donald Trump is reelected there is nothing preventing him from being much more Hands-On with the Department of Justice uh if you want to change that then you would need to amend the Constitution it's just plain and simple there is no such thing under our constitution as an independent agency and going back to the Postmaster General it's certainly true with the Postmaster General he is not an independent actor he is subordinate to the president subject to the to the president uh firing him at any time he wants to and there's not a damn thing you could do about it all right that is an inherent power of the president to Fire appointees Within the executive branch of government regardless of how they're appointed or regardless of any what any statute says and just more broadly speaking not just with respect to to appointments of people and and the ability of presidents to fire people and this goes not just to the president but also to Congress and to the courts and any Authority that any of those branches are given to them by the Constitution cannot be taken away from those branches of government by any means other than a constitutional amendment that's it you know the president cannot take away powers of congress right the president cannot take away Constitutional Powers of the Court the Congress can't take away constitutional powers of the president and it doesn't matter if a president signs off on a a statute that Congress passes if Congress passes a statute limiting the powers of the president and some president signs it that's irrelevant it doesn't matter okay it's an act of Congress it's a you cannot limit or alter in any way the Constitutional Powers of the president or any other branch of government by Statute regardless of whether it's pass signed by the president or not the only way to change any uh branch of government's constit tional Authority is to do so by Constitutional Amendment this is basic constitutional law and but when we get into the arena of politics you're dealing with people who don't know anything about what they're talking about so I get all these people on Twitter telling me this and they're citing me articles okay um most of the time by the way people who write these articles don't know what the hell they're talking about either if they hear on cable news most of the people don't know what the hell they're talking about either but in this case there like I said there is a statute this 1971 statute and so people think oh well there's a statute but they don't understand the basics of our Constitution which I just explained to you it doesn't matter if there's a statute you cannot limit the president's constitutional Authority by Statute so even if the statute expressly says a president cannot fire the Postmaster General to that extent that Constitution uh that statute is unconstitutional it has no effect because you cannot limit the president's ability to fire people by Statute you want to take away you want to make the the the post office completely independent you want to make the Postmaster General an independent actor who cannot be fired by the president the only way to do that is to amend the Constitution that's it you can pass whatever freaking Law whatever statute you want like I said they did the same thing for FBI director and it didn't stop Donald Trump from firing Chris Ray and did Chris Ray go and try to sue to keep his job you know did Congress try to impeach him for violating the law and firing uh Chris Ray no because everybody knows that the president can fire the FBI director regardless of whether or not he has a you know the statute says he has a 10-year term and can't be fired that's okay the the president can fire the FBI director the president can fire the Postmaster General the president can fire anybody in the executive branch any D time he wants you don't like that that's fine amend the Constitution but in less and until you do that's the simple constitutional fact of the matter the president can fire the Attorney General he can fire the Postmaster General he can fire the FBI director can fire any damn bu in the executive branch um I should probably learn not to not to read the comments on Twitter I'd be much better off but I do like to read the comments on Twitter because I can see the misunderstandings that people suffer from and it gives me something to talk about because if I see this you've probably seen it and you might not understand it either and so if I can come here and educate you a little bit on some of this stuff you're going to be better informed which I know the people in this audience want to be I know you guys like to understand this stuff not like these morons on Twitter who don't really care and that's the thing you try I try to correct these people they're not interested it doesn't matter uh that I've been practicing constitutional and criminal law for 25 years and you know they haven't taken a single class on the law right they know better than me because you know they saw it on cable TV they there's no you can't correct people for the most part on Twitter they don't want to learn they just want to engage in arguments on Twitter um and they just want to win some pointless Twitter debate with some stranger that's all they're interested in but I know this audience uh is a much more uh serious audience but and that's why I bring this to you so I hope this makes sense like I said I got really bad sleep last night so I may have rambled in fact I know I rambled and I may not as be be speaking as clearly as I normally am but I hope my points have gotten across um anyways thank you for listening to my rant on this I hope you got something out of it and I'll talk to you again soon