“Very weak”: Ex-prosecutors spot “fatal flaw” in Trump’s immunity claim
Former President Donald Trump in a 2 am all-caps Truth Social post on Thursday argued that the president of the United States “must have full immunity” even for things that “cross the line.” The post came as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is expected to rule on his claim that he is immune from prosecution in special counsel Jack Smith’s D.C. election interference case — a ruling expected to be appealed to the Supreme Court regardless of how the appellate court rules.
“I think this is a very weak claim and I can’t imagine even this court will accept this challenge by Donald Trump,” former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade told MSNBC Thursday night. McQuade noted that Trump attorney Alina Habba in a Fox News interview appeared to lean on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to “step up” because Trump “fought for” him during his confirmation battle. “I think that kind of extortion is going to fall on deaf ears; if anything, I think it’s likely to backfire,” McQuade predicted.
Fellow former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance noted that Trump’s “argument that presidents will always have to look over their shoulder has a fatal flaw which is that he’s the only president to ever face indictment.”
“So when the court of appeals evaluates these arguments, they’ll appreciate those real world aspects to the decision that they’re making, and the legal doctrine very simply is not that presidents are above the law,” she told MSNBC.
“In terms of Donald Trump’s strategy of saying something that outlandish, it really does not help in terms of the court looking and realizing what they’re being asked to do is going to be acted on by this man, so, strategically, it is a terrible idea,” former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann said in an appearance on the network. “I think there’s no way on God’s green earth that this panel is going to find that he is immune from criminal prosecution. That has never been the law, and it is not going to be the law.”