Donald Trump’s lawyers are continuing their bizarre tactic of defending him against criminal charges by essentially admitting his guilt. They’ve now bumped things up a notch and are arguing that not only does it not matter if Trump committed the crimes he’s been accused of, but he could do so much worse if he wanted to.
In response to the numerous separate criminal and civil charges filed against him, Trump and his attorneys have maintained his innocence. However, they’ve also maintained that the things he’s been accused of aren’t really crimes he can be convicted of thanks to his presidential immunity, which reads to many as an admission of guilt.
He’s made this argument regarding the boxes of classified documents he took to Florida after leaving office. He’s said it to defend grossly defaming writer E. Jean Carroll. And he’s insisted that it doesn’t matter if he incited an insurrection because as president, that’s just something he’s allowed to do.
Literal assassination is A-OK!
The question of whether or not Trump’s presidential status makes him immune to charges related to trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election is currently being debated in federal court. And Trump’s lawyer John Sauer chose to argue that not only could Trump not be convicted of inciting an insurrection, but that as president, he could literally order the assassination of a political rival and not be able to be convicted of that either.
Judge Florence Pan asked Sauer at one point if Trump or another sitting president could be subjected to criminal prosecution if they ordered S.E.A.L. Team 6—a special ops group tasked with dangerous, classified operations— to assassinate a political rival. Since giving an order to S.E.A.L. Team 6 falls under official presidential acts, using Sauer’s logic, an order to murder would be protected.
Incredibly, Sauer doesn’t disagree.
Sauer argues that in order to convict a president of ordering an assassination, they would have to be impeached and convicted by Congress first. If they weren’t convicted by the Senate (as Trump wasn’t—twice) or, for example, if they resigned before facing impeachment a lá Richard Nixon, then according to Sauer, they could never be prosecuted or otherwise held accountable.
“Could a president order S.E.A.L. Team Six to assassinate a political rival?” Judge Pan asks after first issuing a hypothetical about a president selling pardons or military secrets. “That’s an official act, an order to S.E.A.L. Team Six.”
It takes some prodding to get Sauer to answer this “yes or no question” but he does finally state that his answer is a “qualified yes.” That president could only be prosecuted “if he were impeached and convicted first.”
This takes Trump’s infamous assertion that he’s so popular he could “shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any voters” and pushes it a step further, insisting he could shoot someone and not face any consequences at all.
It’s actually not even the first time Trump’s lawyers have made that assertion—they said something similar back in 2019—but it’s still extremely distressing.
The good news is that Pan and the other judges on this appellate panel do not seem inclined to accept Trump’s claims of presidential immunity. If they reject that claim, though, Trump will almost certainly appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, and who knows what those extremist Trump-appointed conservatives will do.
(featured image: Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
