Questioning assertions by Donald Trump‘s lawyer John Sauer about Presidential Immunity (PI), Judge Florence Pan got the attorney “to concede that presidents can be criminally prosecuted for official acts, because he’s conceded impeachment and conviction in senate can trigger right to prosecute.”
Pan gets Sauer to concede that presidents can be criminally prosecuted for official acts, because he's conceded impeachment and conviction in senate can trigger right to prosecute.
— Lee Kovarsky (@lee_kovarsky) January 9, 2024
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That’s the assessment of University of Texas Law Professor Lee Kovarsky, as he follows the hearing on Trump’s request to have Special Counsel Jack Smith‘s election subversion case against him dismissed, mainly on the claim that all of his actions and conduct before and after the election were part of his official duties as President — and therefore render him immune from prosecution.
Part of the reason it’s a tough sell — or why Pan is perhaps not buying it — are exchanges like the one below, where Pan asks Sauer if a president can be held criminally responsible for ordering the assassination of political rival?
Whatever the rule of law Sauer summons, the spirit of the law says no, assassinating political rivals is not allowed — any American would concur. Yet Sauer asserts a President cannot be held criminally responsible for such an act, unless impeached and convicted.
Pan Q: So president cannot be held criminally responsible for ordering assassination of political rival?
— Lee Kovarsky (@lee_kovarsky) January 9, 2024
Sauer (Trump's lawyer): No, unless impeached and convicted. (Phrased differently, yes, if impeached and convicted.)
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Sauer is making the case to a 3-judge panel – Pan, J. Michelle Childs, and Karen LeCraft Henderson — in the Washington, DC, Circuit Court of Appeals.
An idea of how Kovarsky thinks, as he weighs in on the proceedings, about the situation generally might be gleaned from the tweet below, which emphasizes how extraordinary partisanship is able to shift the truth for those under its influence.
It's quite a world watching folks professing to be practitioners of original public meaning try to argue that the president isn't an officer of the United States, or that 1/6 wasn't an insurrection, or that Trump didn't "engage in" it or "aid or comfort" enemies.
— Lee Kovarsky (@lee_kovarsky) January 7, 2024
