Rep. Blake Moore says Trump had authority to conduct strikes on Iran

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah Rep. Blake Moore said he believes President Donald Trump had authority to order the strikes against Iran on Saturday, after Congress rejected articles of impeachment filed by a Democratic lawmaker accusing the president of usurping Congress’s power to declare war.

The question was brought up by a young constituent during a telephone town hall Moore held on Tuesday. The Layton resident, a 17-year-old, asked Moore if he would support Trump’s impeachment following the bombing of three Iranian nuclear facilities over the weekend.

While Moore said the president’s ability to order military strikes is a worthy topic of discussion, he said he didn’t support impeaching Trump over the decision and was glad that a majority of Democrats and Republicans in the House voted to table the impeachment charges.

“There is a small minority of individuals from both parties that don’t want the president to have this use of military force ability,” he said. “Reading or hearing about so much of it right now in opposition to President Trump, go look who these individuals are, and if they are saying it with Obama, if they’re saying it with Biden, if they said it Trump’s first term … they have some credibility.”

Moore said Congress has “given that authority to the president” to conduct strikes like the ones against Iran, arguing that the powers have been used by every president in recent decades.

“This is not a declaration of war — that still has to be done through Congress — but we give some discretion to the president, our commander in chief, on these issues,” he said.

Moore added that politicians in Congress are “horrible at keeping these secret,” saying word of the strikes “would have been leaked before the meeting was over” if Trump briefed members of Congress in advance.

Although some critics have argued that Trump’s actions overstep Congress’s authority to declare wars, the president likely has power to order military actions over a short period of time without going through Congress, according to Ryan Vogel, the director of the Center for National Security Studies at the University of Utah.

“As much as I think some people will not like this answer, I think the answer is probably yes. The president does have authority to use force against foreign powers up to 60 days under the War Powers Act,” he told KSL.com Monday.

“If it goes beyond that, then Congress needs to be involved. Of course, if it’s a full-on war that the president is starting — Congress has authority to declare war — but the president does, under Article II (of the Constitution) have quite a bit of authority to respond to emergencies and to use force against foreign enemies up to 60 days,” Vogel said.