On Tuesday, a Trump legal team appeared before a panel of the federal court of appeals serving Washington, D.C., to argue for their idea of presidential immunity, under which presidents would have nearly total protection from the possibility of criminal prosecution for actions in their role. Donald is trying to use the arguments to shut down a criminal case from Special Counsel Jack Smith over the ex-president’s post-2020 election schemes to stay in power despite a documented loss.
Trump continued the discussion on Truth Social, his knock-off social media site. Early Tuesday evening, he complained about impacts from prosecutorial action like Smith’s on ex-presidents’ “golden years.” “WITHOUT IMMUNITY, IT WOULD BE VERY HARD FOR A PRESIDENT TO ENJOY HIS OR HER “GOLDEN YEARS” OF RETIREMENT. THEY WOULD BE UNDER SIEGE BY RADICAL, OUT OF CONTROL PROSECUTORS, MUCH LIKE I AM, BUT WITHOUT THE RETIREMENT!!!” he said — posting, yet again, in all capital letters.
The idea is apparently that such is what Smith is currently perpetrating, since Justice Department prosecutors have been working under the assumption that no, a former president isn’t nearly entirely shielded from criminal consequences for actions they took amid their official duties.
Another notable portion of the Trump team’s wide-ranging complaints on Tuesday came in court from a lawyer for the former president, who left open the possibility in his arguments that a president could order a military assassination of a political opponent and then escape prosecution. Directly asked about that hypothetical situation and whether the perpetrator could be charged, the lawyer’s initial reaction was a refusal to just say “yes.”
The Trump team’s idea is that impeachment and conviction in the Senate over contested conduct must come before any prosecution in court over official actions — undoing their own more wide-reaching arguments about something like ostensibly protecting the separation of powers since they themselves say there are some circumstances in which a former chief executive could be put under the judiciary’s authority.
