During a discussion this weekend on MSNBC with host Jen Psaki, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) ripped into some now infamous arguments recently made by former President Donald Trump and his legal team amid a criminal case from Special Counsel Jack Smith. That case covers Trump’s attempts to stay in power after the 2020 presidential election despite losing, and Trump is arguing in court that he has wide-ranging protections from prosecution merely by virtue of his time in office that should stop the case.
“On the merits of this, is a president immune while in office from being prosecuted for committing crimes when he leaves office, the answer is clearly no, and I think even with the current Supreme Court, they’re going to conclude no, you don’t have that kind of immunity,” Schiff predicted on the air.
The dispute has most recently been considered by a three-judge panel on a court of appeals in Washington, D.C., where during oral arguments — meaning arguments conducted in person — a lawyer for Trump left open the possibility that a president could order a military assassination of a political opponent and somehow evade prosecution.
The assumption that Trump is trying to push is that what he was doing after the last presidential race was meaningfully part of his duties in office and advanced the interests of the American people. In reality, actually carrying out the schemes that Trump put forward and that Smith alleges were criminal would have meant the invalidation of the collective impact of tens of millions of duly documented votes for Joe Biden.
Prosecutors have argued that even in the scenario of some immunity for former presidents from criminal prosecution, what Trump was perpetrating was clearly outside the scope of his White House role. The Supreme Court already rejected an attempt by Smith to fast-track the dispute and get their intervention sooner, but that decision was merely procedural, leaving further consideration to lower courts.
