In a new article for The New York Times, well-known former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, blasts the arguments of presidential immunity pushed by ex-White House occupant Donald Trump. Cheney insists that the U.S. Supreme Court must move quickly to shut down Trump’s claims. They’re hearing in-person arguments this week.
In the context of a criminal case covering his conduct after the last presidential election, Trump is claiming that he holds wide-ranging legal protections merely by virtue of once serving as president that, in his telling, should end the case. He groups his highly publicized targeting of the 2020 presidential election outcome with the responsibilities of the White House, although carrying his evident ambitions to their end would have resulted, in reality, in the undoing of the collective impact of tens of millions of duly documented votes for president from Americans nationwide.
Cheney expressed confidence that the nation’s highest court would reject Trump’s sweeping claims of immunity as federal courts at other levels have already done, but she was concerned about the timetable for their action.
“If delay prevents this Trump case from being tried this year, the public may never hear critical and historic evidence developed before the grand jury, and our system may never hold the man most responsible for Jan. 6 to account,” Cheney warned in the Times, adding: “If the trial is delayed past this fall and Mr. Trump wins re-election, he will surely fire the special counsel, order his Justice Department to drop all Jan. 6 cases and try to prevent key grand jury testimony from ever seeing the light of day.”
She characterized that potential scenario as a failure if it unfolds. “It cannot be that a president of the United States can attempt to steal an election and seize power but our justice system is incapable of bringing him to trial before the next election four years later,” Cheney wrote. The general public should be able to “fully assess what Mr. Trump did on Jan. 6 and what a man capable of that type of depravity could do if again handed the awesome power of the presidency,” the new article adds.
