US presidents cannot be prosecuted for selling pardons or assassinating political rivals through SEAL Team Six, personal Trump lawyer John Sauer argued Tuesday
Advancing a sweeping interpretation of executive immunity, Donald Trump’s attorney told a federal appeals court on Tuesday that U.S. presidents could not be prosecuted for selling pardons or assassinating political rivals through SEAL Team Six.
Trump’s lead attorney D. John Sauer argued that only a president who has been impeached and removed from office in a Senate trial potentially would be subject to prosecution for those kinds of alleged crimes.
A three-judge panel appeared extremely skeptical of Trump’s vision of absolute immunity, sharply questioning and interrupting Sauer during the opening minutes of the oral arguments with the former president himself sitting nearby.
“Could a president order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival? That’s an official act–an order to Seal Team Six,” U.S. Circuit Judge Florence Pan asked Sauer.
“He would have to be, and would speedily be, you know, impeached and convicted before the criminal prosecution,” Sauer replied, setting a pre-condition for such prosecution in Pan’s hypothetical.
If you take that argument to the logical extreme, a President who has committed all those bad acts can:
-
Stop all investigations of said bad acts, therefore avoiding impeachment.
-
Threaten any member of the House that is thinking of voting to impeach him.
-
On the off-chance is impeached and is now waiting the verdict of the Senate, have every incentive to offer all kinds of corrupt deals (free pardons, private arms deals, etc) to Senators to buy their vote. This way, they won’t be convicted in the Senate and they can keep enjoying their infinite immunity forever.
Neat-o.
Or just go one step further and have all Congressional members of the opposing party killed.
Biden would never do this and I don’t want him to, but let’s suppose that Trump’s “legal theory” is correct and Biden wakes up tomorrow thinking that he’s sick of dealing with the Republicans’ malarkey. He orders some military groups known to be loyal to him to round up every Republican member of Congress along with certain Supreme Court justices. They are all executed. Then Trump is brought in and executed as well.
Now what would happen? Would Biden be charged with mass murder? No, he’s immune to prosecution. You need to impeach and convict him first. But nobody remains who would impeach him. So he’s totally immune as he appoints left leaning Supreme Court justices and expands his “early Republican retirement program” to right leaning Federal judges.
Again, I wouldn’t want him doing this, but according to Trump this would be totally legal.
Trump is literally scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to attorneys
Can you imagine the payoff though if the court agrees and he becomes president? Assassinate your enemies, straight out of Putin’s playbook. That’s a dictator’s favorite move! Democrats and liberals wouldn’t do it because they have fucking morals, but the GOP would be happy to.
Trump’s lead attorney D. John Sauer argued that only a president who has been impeached and removed from office in a Senate trial potentially would be subject to prosecution for those kinds of alleged crimes
And it gets better. In the Georgia case, they are arguing that Trump can’t be tried because he was impeached for that crime and a criminal trial would be double jeopardy.
Ignore for a second that his impeachment wasn’t over the Georgia crimes. Trump’s lawyers are arguing that you need to impeach/convict before you can criminally charge, but if you impeach then you can’t criminally charge.
Their legal theories are the equivalent of “I object! It’s devastating to my case!”
If we have to debate this much whether or not a President should stand trial for criminal charges, I think he did it.
, I think he did it.
At this point, we’re way past that line of the narcissist’s prayer
Can a lawyer be disbarred for advocating for the dissolution of the Rule of Law?
