US presidents cannot be prosecuted for selling pardons or assassinating political rivals through SEAL Team Six, personal Trump lawyer John Sauer argued Tuesday

Advancing a sweeping interpretation of executive immunity, Donald Trump’s attorney told a federal appeals court on Tuesday that U.S. presidents could not be prosecuted for selling pardons or assassinating political rivals through SEAL Team Six.

Trump’s lead attorney D. John Sauer argued that only a president who has been impeached and removed from office in a Senate trial potentially would be subject to prosecution for those kinds of alleged crimes.

A three-judge panel appeared extremely skeptical of Trump’s vision of absolute immunity, sharply questioning and interrupting Sauer during the opening minutes of the oral arguments with the former president himself sitting nearby.

“Could a president order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival? That’s an official act–an order to Seal Team Six,” U.S. Circuit Judge Florence Pan asked Sauer.

“He would have to be, and would speedily be, you know, impeached and convicted before the criminal prosecution,” Sauer replied, setting a pre-condition for such prosecution in Pan’s hypothetical.

  • vexikron@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    And so after years upon years upon decades of rhetoric from Republicans warning about the growing power of the Executive and the abuses of the Executive by FDR…

    … uh, nevermind all that apparently, if our guy is in charge he should be able to just unilaterally assasinate political rivals.

    You know. Like anyone that would vote to impeach him. For assassinating political rivals.

    This is literal baby brain logic that actual Elementary School Children could probably understand is stupid.

    Hooray for living in Clown World, the dumbest possible timeline.

    This is basically logic that can only possibly have come from serious QTard Syndrome, Terminal Stage. Its the only way possible for /the Storm/ to actually happen.