Jamie Raskin Points Out That Trump Lawyer’s ‘Absurd Argument’ Would Incentivize Impeached Presidents to Assassinate Senators
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) responded to what he called an “utterly ludicrous” argument made by Donald Trump’s attorney in federal court on Tuesday.
John Sauer argued before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, claiming that the former president is immune from criminal prosecution.
Judge Florence Pan posed a hypothetical to Sauer, leading to this exchange:
PAN: Could a president order Seal Team Six to assassinate a political rival? That’s an official act, an order to Seal Team Six.
SAUER: He would have to be and would speedily be, you know, uh, impeached and convicted before the criminal prosecution–
PAN: But there would be no criminal prosecution, no criminal liability for that?
SAUER: Chief Justice’s opinion in Marbury against Madison and, uh, uh, and our Constitution and the plain language of the impeachment judgment clause all clearly presuppose that what the founders were concerned about was not.
PAN: I asked you a yes, no, yes or no question. Could a president who ordered Seal Team Six to assassinate a political rival, who was not impeached, would he be subject to criminal prosecution?
SAUER: If he were impeached and convicted first.
The argument has been widely ridiculed by legal experts. Hours after oral arguments, Raskin appeared on CNN, where he noted that a Senate conviction being a precondition for a criminal prosecution gives a sitting president incentive to assassinate senators inclined to vote to convict him.
“The presentation in the D.C. Circuit Court of appeals before the three-judge panel was astounding,” Raskin said. “Donald Trump and his lawyers essentially asserted that the president has the right to assassinate people, to kill people without any prospect of prosecution unless they’re first impeached by the House and convicted in the Senate.”
The lawmaker then posited a scenario in which a president has been impeached or may be impeached. Raskin pointed out that the president could avoid a conviction – and ultimately criminal prosecution – by murdering unsympathetic lawmakers:
And of course, as a member of Congress, my first thought was, well, then if the president is going to order out for the assassination of his political rivals, and say there’s a narrow margin in the Senate of a two or three vote in the opposition party, what’s to keep him from murdering members of the Senate to make sure that he doesn’t get convicted there in order to deny a two-thirds majority?
He could kill them and then he can’t be impeached or convicted because he’s murdered his opposition and can’t be prosecuted for it because he hasn’t been impeached or convicted. Now, of course, Trump’s argument is utterly ludicrous. Nobody’s ever even attempted such an absurd argument in American history. But it shows you how outlandish and deranged Donald Trump’s worldview is at this point. And it’s very dangerous because all of it revolves around political violence.
Watch above via CNN.
