When former President Donald Trump’s lawyers appeared in federal appeals court Tuesday, the odds were already not in their favor. And they seemed to grow slimmer the more they argued their case. At issue was their claim that, as a former president, their client has immunity from the criminal charges that a grand jury impaneled by special counsel Jack Smith brought in an election interference case. The three-judge panel that heard their arguments was rightly skeptical — and at one point used a former member of their client’s defense team to poke holes in their flimsy legal theories.
Trump is attempting to make two interlocking farcical arguments in this case. I’ve previously debunked one of them, which posits that to prosecute a president who was acquitted in a Senate impeachment trial would violate the “double jeopardy” clause of the Fifth Amendment. The second argument, made by his lawyer John Sauer, is that the former president enjoys a blanket immunity for actions he took in office, one that can be overcome only in the event of a conviction in the Senate.
There are several reasons these propositions make no sense.
There are several reasons these propositions make no sense. It would mean a world where a president is unable to be held accountable for a crime short of impeachment’s “high crimes and misdemeanors” standard. Judge Florence Pan further pointed out how that kind of loophole could be abused, especially in the waning days of a presidency. She asked whether a president could order an assassination of a political rival but get off scot-free if not convicted in an impeachment trial. Sauer, wildly enough, agreed with that hypothetical.
While that was the most headline-grabbing moment of the hearing, it was what Pan said later that managed to completely implode the supposed “double jeopardy” argument Trump’s lawyers were making.
The sole article of impeachment in the second case the House brought against Trump, passed in the aftermath of…
Read the full article here