Former President Donald Trump is now again pushing his insistence publicly that he has total immunity from criminal prosecution for his post-2020 election actions that have formed the foundation of a case from the Justice Department’s Special Counsel Jack Smith.
Trump’s team is arguing the same in court, where the dispute has reached a court of appeals in Washington, D.C. The idea is, in short, that presidents should be held to have what mostly would work out to absolute immunity from prosecution for actions taken as part of their official responsibilities, and that’s where the former president and his team categorize what he was doing after the 2020 presidential race concluded. Prosecutors counter that there’s simply no precedent in law or the relevant histories of legal practice for imagining such immunity, and even if there was some level of immunity in criminal contexts that some court wished to impart, what Trump was perpetrating was clearly not part of his official duties.
“Remember, I was not campaigning—The 2020 Election was LONG OVER,” Trump said Tuesday, glossing over the clear fact that he was trying to stay in office, effectively extending that campaign season. “What I was doing is bringing to light the fact that the Election was, without question, Rigged and Stolen. As President, and Commander-in-Chief, it was my duty to do so! If I did not do this, I would have been in violation of my Oath of Office, and the Take Care Clause, which requires the President to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Therefore I am entitled to Total Immunity, because that is exactly what I was doing, Taking Care of our Country, and Guarding it from Rigged and Stolen Elections.”
Trump’s plots after the 2020 race would have actually resulted in the evident disenfranchisement of millions of American voters, meaning they’d have been essentially pushed from the electoral process. What in reality were their duly documented votes were targeted by Trump and his team across key states.
