Trump lawyer asks SCOTUS if ex-presidents Bush, Obama & Biden face charges for their crimes while in office.
A lawyer representing former President Donald Trump in a pivotal Supreme Court case on presidential immunity on Thursday posed a hypothetical question asking if ex-presidents George Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden could similarly be retroactively charged for their transgressions while in office.
“Without presidential immunity from criminal prosecution there can be no presidency as we know it,” Trump attorney D. John Sauer said during his opening statement.
“For 234 years of American history, no president was ever prosecuted for his official Acts. The Framers of our Constitution viewed an energetic executive as essential to securing Liberty.”
“If a president can be charged, put on trial, and imprisoned for his most controversial decisions as soon as he leaves office, that looming threat will distort the president’s decision-making precisely when bold and fearless action is most needed,” he continued. “Every current president will face de facto blackmail and extortion by his political rivals while he is still in office.”
“The implications of the Court’s decision here extend far beyond the facts of this case,” Sauer stated.
The opening statement by Trumps attorney struck home with me.
There are concrete crimes committed by other presidents that haven’t been touched by any prosecutorial standard.
If they strip Trump of the immunity, then the last 5 presidents have to take the stand and go to court. pic.twitter.com/rdrjzSjqrj
— Joshua Walker (@RedsRepair95) April 25, 2024
“Could President George W. Bush have been sent to prison for obstructing an official proceeding or allegedly lying to Congress to induce war in Iraq?” asked Sauer.
“Could President Obama be charged with murder for killing US citizens abroad by drone strike?” he continued. “Could President Biden someday be charged with unlawfully inducing immigrants to enter the country illegally for his border policies?”
“The answer to all these questions is no. Prosecuting the president for his official acts is an innovation with no foothold in history or tradition and incompatible with our constitutional structure.”
Meanwhile, attorney Michael Dreeben, representing the Biden Justice Department and Special Counsel Jack Smith attempted to claim the Constitution does not grant presidential immunity.
Elsewhere during the proceedings, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor questioned if presidential immunity extends to a president who orders a military assassination of a political rival.
Of course, Dreeben when asked if Obama could be tried for murder for the drone strikes argued this could not be the case.
“So the Office of Legal Counsel looked at this very carefully and determined that, number one, the federal murder statute does apply to the executive branch,” Dreeben said. “The president wasn’t personally carrying out the strike, but the aiding and abetting laws are broad, and it determined that a public authority exception that’s built into statutes and that applied particularly to the murder statute, because it talks about unlawful killing, did not apply to the drone strike.”
Justice Samuel Alito later discussed the prospect of vindictive prosecutors with ulterior political motives with Dreeben.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also got smacked down when she tried to argue a broad immunity scope would “embolden” a president to act with reckless abandon, to which Trump’s attorney replied it hadn’t been a problem for the past 234 years.
President Trump remarked favorably of the SCOTUS case on Thursday.
“The U.S. Supreme Court had a monumental hearing on immunity and the immunity having to do with presidential immunity, and I think it was made clear that a president has to have immunity—We want presidents that can get things done and bring people together. So, I heard the meeting was quite amazing and the justices were on their game.”
🚨Trump responds to the Supreme Court hearing on presidential immunity:
“The U.S. Supreme Court had a monumental hearing on immunity and the immunity having to do with presidential immunity, and I think it was made clear that a president has to have immunity—We want presidents… pic.twitter.com/zqf2N8iu4u
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) April 25, 2024
Zero Hedge reports SCOTUS could issue a ruling granting Trump partial immunity.
Reading the tea-leaves of the comments has left most believing that SCOTUS will fail to grant former President Trump the full immunity he is seeking (choosing instead to narrow the protections for former presidents), but are likely to issue a ruling that could further delay his trial on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.
That would be a partial win for the former President.
