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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.
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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.
Follow this authorRuth Marcus's opinionsFollow“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.
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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.
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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........