1084 Section 1503(a) provides for criminal punishment of: Whoever . . . corruptly or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication, influences, obstructs, or impedes, or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice. 1085 Section 1505 provides for criminal punishment of: Whoever corruptly . . . influences, obstructs, or impedes or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper administration of the law under which any pending proceeding is being had before any department or agency of the United States, or the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress. 1086 6/23/17 Letter, President’s Personal Counsel to Special Counsel’s Office, at 2 n. 1. 1087 OLC applied such a balancing test in concluding that the President is not subject to criminal prosecution while in office, relying on many of the same precedents discussed in this section. See A Sitting President’s Amenability to Indictment and Criminal Prosecution, 24 Op. O.L.C. 222, 237-238, 244-245 (2000) (relying on, inter alia, United States v. Nixon, Nixon v. Fitzgerald, and Clinton v. Jones, and quoting the legal standard from Administrator of General Services v. Nixon that is applied in the text). OLC recognized that “[t]he balancing analysis” it had initially relied on in finding that a sitting President is immune from prosecution had “been adopted as the appropriate mode of analysis by the Court.” Id. at 244. 1088 Although the FBI director is an inferior officer, he is appointed by the President and removable by him at will, see 28 U.S.C. § 532 note, and it is not clear that Congress could constitutionally provide the FBI director with good-cause tenure protection. See OLC, Constitutionality of Legislation Extending the Term of the FBI Director, 2011 WL 2566125, at *3 (O.L.C. June 20, 2011) (“tenure protection for an officer with the FBI Director’s broad investigative, administrative, and policymaking responsibilities would raise a serious constitutional question whether Congress had ‘impede[d] the President’s ability to perform his constitutional duty’ to take care that the laws be faithfully executed”) (quoting Morrison, 487 U.S. at 691). 1089 The obstruction statutes do not disqualify the President from acting in a case simply because he has a personal interest in it or because his own conduct may be at issue. As the Department of Justice has made clear, a claim of a conflict of interest, standing alone, cannot deprive the President of the ability to fulfill his constitutional function. See, e.g., OLC, Application of 28 U.S.C. § 458 to Presidential Appointments of Federal Judges, 19 O.L.C. Op. at 356 (citing Memorandum for Richard T. Burress, Office of the President, from Laurence H. Silberman, Deputy Attorney General, Re: Conflict of Interest Problems Arising out of the President’s Nomination of Nelson A. Rockefeller to be Vice President under the Twenty- Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, at 2, 5 (Aug. 28, 1974)). 1090 As noted above, the President’s selection and removal of principal executive officers may have a unique constitutional status. 1091 A possible remedy through impeachment for abuses of power would not substitute for potential criminal liability after a President leaves office. Impeachment would remove a President from office, but would not address the underlying culpability of the conduct or serve the usual purposes of the criminal law. Indeed, the Impeachment Judgment Clause recognizes that criminal law plays an independent role in addressing an official’s conduct, distinct from the political remedy of impeachment. See U.S. CONST. ART. l,