Road to 2024: Trump in Federal Court For Immunity Case

➡ The text discusses the contention surrounding presidential immunity for official acts, particularly in relation to former President Trump’s actions around January 6. The discussion debates whether a president, who’s acted within his official capacities while in office, should be immune from future prosecution. It points out the consequences of trying to prosecute former presidents for their official decisions, indicating how it may influence future presidencies and potentially fill the Oval Office with lawyers to avoid legal pitfalls.

Remember, this is the special counsel brought this unique case, Jack Smith, to determine presidential immunity specifically, you know, when what acts are immune, and then just figure out how his prosecution would move forward because he knew that would be an issue that would be brought up and, of course, has to be determined to even move forward on the allegations that he has made against President Trump. These specific to January 6, and again, discussing that there was an impeachment there, but there was no conviction.

And so do you have to have that when you’re talking about an acting president who’s now not in office to then have a prosecution, you have to have not just the impeachment part, but the conviction part as well to move forward. And so it’s this major discussion really over presidential powers, immunity of a president. And, of course, this is a unique situation, dad, because this is not just a former president.

He’s also a current candidate for president, United States, and the leading candidate right now. So the issue should have been framed, and I don’t think it was framed as well as it could have been. Does a action of a president, while he is president, within the confines of his official duties, give him immunity from later prosecution? And the answer to that question should be yes. But for some reason, it got convoluted.

Andy, I thought in the argument, in the sense that they were saying, well, there’s exceptions. And he started with the exceptions rather than with what the rule should be. Once you start carving out exceptions, then you eat up the rule. I agree with you that the way that it was phrased was not the way that it should have been posited before the court, because then the court could chip away, as it did with these various exceptions.

I think this is where it started on the kind of idea of where are these narrow exceptions? Here it is. It’s by force sour. This is, first you’ll hear the attorney for President Trump, who was the former solicitor general of Missouri. Then you will hear from the judge asking the question there. Judge Pan, take a listen. To authorize the prosecution of a president for his official acts would open a pandora’s box from which this nation may never recover.

Could George W. Bush be prosecuted for obstruction of an official proceeding, for allegedly giving false information to Congress to induce the nation to go to war in Iraq under false pretenses? Could President Obama be potentially charged with murder for allegedly authorizing drone strikes targeting U. S. Citizens located abroad? Could president, can I explore sort of the implications of what you’re arguing? I understand your position to be that a president is immune from criminal prosecution for any official act that he takes as president, even if that action is taken for an unlawful or unconstitutional purpose.

Is that correct? With an important exception, which is that if the president is impeached and convicted by the United States Senate in a proceeding that reflects widespread political consensus, that would authorize the prosecution under the plain language of the impeachment judgment clause. So, yes, with that exception, the impeachment clause is clear about that. If you are impeached and convicted, you are removed from office. But it doesn’t just in there for you, necessarily, dad.

That’s true. The question is, in those hypotheticals, would ordering someone, as they said later, to be killed, still, what does fall with an official act and what would actually, it went awry. Right. Okay. They should have been arguing the entire time. The clause of the Constitution that the president is responsible to faithfully execute, it’s called the execution clause, the Constitution of the United States. That’s what he was doing when he was checking on whether the election was properly done or not.

That was in his duties as president, and that’s where the case should have ended. He’s trying to determine what’s official, what’s not, and that they have to take all this advice from it raises the idea of that the lawyers to the president, and I’ve thought this for the last, since you’ve been in those roles too, were way too high. Lawyers are not who should be running lawyers. We were not elected by the american people to be the president of the United States because we were those lawyers.

So saying you were the lawyers, why I got the lawyers advice to do it. He’s the president and commander in chief. He is required under the constitution to make sure the laws are faithfully executed. That should be the beginning and the end of this case. And both sides did a rather mediocre job of getting that through. Well, I think they did a very poor job of getting it through.

But you’re right, Jay. The laws be faithfully executed. And that is a decision that is made by the chief executive, by the president of the United States. And as Jordan mentioned, this is not for lawyers to make counseling decisions. I mean, he may take advice if he wants to, but once that decision is taken, it’s a political decision taken by the president to effectively execute the constitution, and that ends the inquiry 15 years from now.

Whatever happens in these cases is going to greatly impact how presidents govern. Oh, you know, quite. Listen, we’re going to be fully engaged when the kind of the heat dies down over it’s Trump and Biden. And the special counsels and all these January 6 and all those issues, and you’re just talking about future presence, where this is very much history, but it’s history that’s going to decide how they govern, because right now it sounds like they need to mostly hire a law firm and put them inside the Oval Office for any decision they want to make.

Yeah. Which is not the way the constitution, and that’s what they’re warning about, is that if you start this process, dad, all it becomes as president is being sued in court, civil and criminal. There’s already too many lawyers involved in presidential decision making, to be quite honest. Same thing’s true in combat. Too many lawyers involved. And now this is just going to, if they decide there is no immunity here, this is just going to amp that up, Andy, a thousandfold.

Well, I think you’re right. We do have too many lawyers that are involved in something that is a presidential decision. And I think that this oral argument today stands for one proposition. You better have a good, solid, simple, straightforward legal theory and stick with that legal theory, because you’re going to be chipped away at by judges in oral argument. And unless you can go back to the same argument that you have, your core argument, this is the president.

He is immune for official acts taken during the pendency of his presidency. These are very important things. Stick with it and stick with it. In the core of his presidency, the enforcement of the laws to be faithfully executed, including the election laws uniquely vesting in the executive. And he had the right to do that. And this isn’t a case where he murdered someone with SEAL team six. Okay, so you would argue those were not presidential duties and responsibilities unless something happened to SEAl team six when he decided to put them out into a mission, and they can now have him sued for that.

Yes. I mean, all of that gets more complicated than how these judges try to pose these hypotheticals. I would have been resolute. I would not have budged for my position. I wouldn’t have said, well, there are exceptions. Yeah. And again, I think even in that situation, calling it an exception, it’s not exceptions. The constitution has it laid out. It’s called impeachment. And it’s laid out there. And that’s the way you get to a president.

If you ultimately want to remove their immunity from prosecution, you have to impeach them, convict them, and then you could bring charges in court. This is what everyone is concerned about. If you take Trump, take Biden, take January 6, and go 20 years ahead and say, a president’s going to look to this and all the, all the, what was happened culturally, push that aside. They’re going to just look at how does this apply to me? And you could see the president having to govern this way.

If a president has to look over his shoulder or her shoulder every time he or she has to make a controversial decision and worry after I leave office, am I going to jail for this? When my political opponents take power, that inevitably dampens the ability of the line. That is the line. And that should have been the line they stuck with the whole time. And that is when the president is in his core responsibilities as president of the United States.

He cannot be sued later for those actions, period. That is not the same thing. Is committing murder in the White House. That is not the same thing as poisoning the chef. Okay? That’s not an official act to advance the interests of the United States, but election verification certainly was arguable. .