BY\u00a0DAMIEN SHARKOV
\nNEWSWEEK<\/p>\n
U.S. lawmakers have been almost unanimous in\u00a0backing\u00a0both tightening sanctions on Russia and taking out of the White House’s hands the ability to lift sanctions. To be put into effect, their efforts now just await the signature of President Donald Trump\u2014the man Russia hoped would drop the sanctions altogether.<\/p>\n
Can the president still choose to scrap this\u00a0bill? He certainly has veto power, and his government has\u00a0suggested he may use it. In fact, his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, was among the first to make the case, before a key vote on the sanctions bill in June, that the U.S. government needs to go into discussions with Russia and any other government with\u00a0\u201cflexibility\u201d on matters such as sanctions<\/a>\u2014something that secretaries of state would be stripped of if White House oversight is replaced by congressional oversight.<\/p>\n Earlier this week, Trump\u2019s new director of communications, Anthony Scaramucci, said Trump could veto the new sanctions not necessarily due to his longstanding admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but because he may think they are not harsh enough. Critics of the administration may point to more cynical motives\u2014namely,\u00a0the ongoing investigation into alleged collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign\u2014as cause for him to break ranks with nearly every senior U.S. lawmaker on this issue.<\/p>\n Whatever the reason for a veto, Trump can use it. Whether it would suffice is a different matter, as congressional support for the bill would likely be strong enough to override his veto.<\/p>\n \u201cConstitutionally if a law is passed by a two-thirds majority in both houses, the presidential veto can be overturned,\u201d Jacob Parakilas, assistant project director for the U.S. Project at Chatham House,\u00a0tells\u00a0Newsweek<\/em>. \u201cThe mechanism in place means the bill then goes back for voting again and there is no real question that they would overturn the veto if Trump does use it.\u201d<\/p>\n The bill passed both the House and the Senate by more than a two-thirds majority; the House approved it with 419 votes and the Senate with 98.<\/p>\n Exercising the veto would trigger political backlash, possibly to little avail, Parakilas says:\u00a0\u201cThe danger for any president using a veto in such a case is that they look ineffective and weak.\u201d It would likely give more ammunition to Trump\u2019s opponents who suspect him of harboring excessive sympathy for Putin. An explicit veto, however, is not his only option in avoiding the terms of the legislation.<\/p>\n Given the odds Trump is facing in Congress, an outright veto would be a bold message to say the least. But there is another way to keep the new sanctions bill from bearing his signature, and it mainly consists of leaving it unsigned at an opportune time, according to the Constitution\u2019s Article I, section 7, cl. 2.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Congress is in session, then a bill becomes law 10 days after the president receives it, unless the president vetoes it,\u201d Dan Farber, professor of law at the University of California, says. \u201cBut if Congress is not in session, then the bill dies unless it is signed by the president. This is called a pocket veto because the president can kill a bill just by \u2018putting it in his pocket.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Normally, the final week of July would present a good opportunity for a pocket veto, as Congress routinely schedules its recess for the entirety of August. However, the contentious health care bill debate caused the Republican-led\u00a0Senate to\u00a0postpone\u00a0the start of this recess until the third week of August<\/a>. Depending on when U.S. lawmakers officially present the sanctions bill to Trump for signature, the pocket veto could become a possibility in the 10 days before the recess. But Congress could get around it by simply presenting the bill more than 10 days before the start of recess.<\/p>\n Another possibility is \u201cto simply to delay sending the bill back to the White House until they return in September,\u201d Farber says. \u201cThat would definitely work because the 10-day clock doesn’t start running until the bill is \u2018presented\u2019 to the president. If the president does try to use a pocket veto, I think members of the House and Senate will be quite angry, and they may respond by just passing the bill again and forcing Trump to sign it or veto it.\u201d<\/p>\n Signature and ratification does not equal implementation. There is precedent for a U.S. president to sign a bill but block elements of it from being put into practice.<\/p>\n \u201cThere’s a potential gulf between signing a law and actually implementing it,\u201d says Pamela S. Karlan, professor at the Stanford School of Law. \u201cOne frequent historical example is a president who signs a law because it contains provisions that are critical to keeping the government running, but who announces at the time he signs the law that he considers particular provisions in the law unconstitutional and that he will not abide by them.\u201d<\/p>\n Karlan cites\u00a0an example from 2002:\u00a0Under President George W. Bush, Congress passed a bill that required the secretary of state to put the word “Israel” on the passport of an American citizen born in Jerusalem, if that citizen requested it. However, the legal status of that\u00a0holy city is one of the issues at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict\u2014according to the U.N., the city is a\u00a0separate entity (corpus separatum<\/em>)<\/a>, and the U.S. State Department therefore does not recognize it as part of Israel. Official U.S. documents such as a passport list the location of the city simply as \u201cJerusalem\u201d without specifying a country.<\/p>\n According to Karlan, the provision \u201cwas part of an appropriations act that the president needed to sign to keep the government running.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen President Bush signed the act, he announced that he considered that requirement unconstitutional because it trenched upon the president’s foreign affairs power. When the parents of a boy born in Jerusalem requested that the word \u2018Israel\u2019 be put on his passport, the State Department refused,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n The buck did not stop there: The case went to the Supreme Court, which ruled in President Bush\u2019s favor. So, there are some provisions one may not even be able to sue to enforce, whereas some could be resolved through litigation.<\/p>\n The potential for legal wrangling aside, the sanctions bill is a rare example of a major policy that has strong bipartisan support in a divided political environment. The political significance of sabotaging the bill through whatever means may be too \u201cfoolish\u201d and \u201cself-destructive\u201d for the administration to consider, says Dan Fried, a former career U.S. diplomat and coordinator for sanctions policy until February.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s always scope for delay and obfuscation, but there are a lot of serious, good people in the Trump administration who will administer this, I think,\u201d he says. \u201cNormally I would be giving you 10 reasons why congressional control on sanctions is a bad idea. But the Trump administration has itself to blame for irresponsible speculation about unilaterally lifting sanctions during the first weeks. They\u2019ve taken good positions since, but nevertheless.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Fried, a crucial aspect of signing the bill is that sets of sanctions come with conditions of their own expiration. The sanctions on Russia introduced in 2014 due to its annexation of Crimea and the subsequent conflict in Ukraine\u2019s eastern territory are tied to the implementation of the ceasefire deal\u2014the so-called Minsk agreement.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the Russians actually settle the Ukraine conflict on the terms of the Minsk ceasefire accords, then the administration can lift sanctions,\u201d Fried says. Other sanctions that were introduced in response to Russian interference in the U.S. election would be lifted on different terms.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s White House has remained elusive on how the president will tackle the bill. Such an explicit vote in both houses has certainly demonstrated \u201csignificant opposition in the U.S. to strategic collaboration or cooperation with Russia,\u201d Parakilas says, putting pressure on Trump\u2019s general desire for closer ties with Russia.<\/p>\n \u201cCertainly the idea that he is the president who struck the grand bargain or came to an accommodation with Russia, a reset 2.0 if you will, now looks incredibly unlikely,\u201d he says. \u201cBut Trump is not easy to predict. I don\u2019t really know what he is going to do, and his own spokespeople have been unclear.\u201d<\/p>\nCould Congress override a Trump\u00a0veto?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
The pocket veto: Trump\u2019s potential way out<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Can Trump sign but not deliver on the sanctions bill?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Will Trump implement the sanctions?<\/strong><\/h4>\n