The audacity of Trump’s claim has been evident since he raised it in the fall, as was the near-certainty that it would ultimately fail. Still, there was something clarifying about hearing his motion to dismiss demolished by the judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit: George H.W. Bush appointee Karen L. Henderson, joined by Biden nominees Florence Y. Pan and J. Michelle Childs.
“We think we had a very good day today,” Trump predictably declared after the oral argument Tuesday. But his spin does not make it so. The panel’s questions got to the heart of Trump’s staggering overreach. Their hypotheticals exposed the intolerable consequences of establishing such immunity.
And they confronted Trump lawyer D. John Sauer with the concessions his legal predecessors had made on Trump’s behalf long before: in the New York criminal investigation, that Trump enjoyed only “temporary presidential immunity,” while in office; in the second impeachment trial, that Trump could be criminally charged and so didn’t need to be convicted.
“We have a judicial process in this country. We have an investigative process in this country to which no former officeholder is immune,” Trump lawyer David Schoen said at the time of the second impeachment. “That is the process that should be running its course. That is … the appropriate one for investigation, prosecution and punishment.”
If there was any question, going into the argument, about whether Henderson would join the two Biden nominees, her comments suggested the likelihood of a unanimous result, upholding the trial judge’s ruling against Trump.
Henderson expressed some hesitation about the consequences of such a decision, asking: “How do we write an opinion that will stop the floodgates” of tit-for-tat prosecutions of former presidents? But she also questioned Sauer’s argument about Trump’s asserted immunity. “I think it’s paradoxical to say that [Trump’s] constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate criminal laws,” Henderson observed.
The most chilling part of the Trump team’s argument — the part that revealed the implications of granting presidents the broad immunity Trump claims — involved SEAL Team 6, the elite military unit. Pan put the question to Sauer: “Could a president order SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival?”
Sauer hedged, saying a president who issued such an order would be quickly impeached and convicted — the necessary predicate, he argued, for launching a criminal prosecution.
Pan pressed Sauer. “So, he’s not impeached or convicted, we’ll put that aside,” Pan said, “you’re saying a president could sell pardons, could sell military secrets, could order SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival.”
Assistant special counsel James Pearce underscored the unthinkable consequences of that position. “What kind of world are we living in if … a president orders his SEAL Team to assassinate a political rival and resigns, for example, before an impeachment — not a criminal act,” he said. “A president sells a pardon, resigns or is not impeached — not a crime. I think that is an extraordinarily frightening future.”
There’s a subtle but important legal point embedded here as well. As Pan noted, the interchange revealed an inherent weakness in Trump’s argument: If a president who has gone through House impeachment and Senate conviction can be prosecuted, then the immunity that the Trump team claims is obviously not absolute. And if Trump’s lawyers are wrong about the necessity of prior impeachment proceedings — and they are, for reasons I’ll explain — then their case falls apart.
“Once you concede that presidents can be prosecuted under some circumstances, your separation-of-powers argument falls away and the issues before us are narrowed to: Are you correct in your interpretation of the impeachment judgment clause — does the impeachment judgment clause actually say what you say it says?” Pan told Sauer. “That’s all that really we need to decide.”
The impeachment clause of the Constitution provides that “the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.” Trump’s lawyers take that to mean that subsequent prosecution is barred if impeachment or conviction fail.
But as U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan pointed out in rejecting Trump’s argument last month, “reading the Clause to grant absolute criminal immunity to former Presidents would contravene its plain meaning, original understanding, and common sense.” The purpose was to permit prosecution in spite of Senate conviction, Chutkan noted, not to prevent it in the absence of impeachment proceedings.
There are additional wrinkles here. The court could rule that Trump doesn’t even have the right to appeal at this early stage in his criminal trial, although the special counsel agrees with Trump’s lawyers that the appeal is permitted before trial and possible conviction. As a practical matter, that would kick the can down the road but not interfere with prosecutors’ ability to bring the case to trial.
And that is the real point of the immunity dispute. Trump’s lawyers don’t really expect to win it — they just want to run out the clock, past the current March 4 trial date and, preferably, past Election Day. That won’t take just a quick ruling by Tuesday’s panel to avoid, but also an equally swift disposition by the full appeals court or Supreme Court, when the case inevitably comes its way.
Timing isn’t everything here, but it’s awfully close.
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