Judges Warned of Devastating Repercussions of Granting Trump Full Immunity: Would ‘Effectively Shut Down the Government’
MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin joined anchor Ana Cabrera on Tuesday and read through some of the key highlights in the unanimous DC appeals court decision that former President Donald Trump does not have immunity from prosecution.
“The argument Trump’s trying to make, that this just opened up a whole can of worms if he isn’t given immunity. Did the judges here effectively shut that down?” Cabrera asked.
“I think they did. Ana, in two ways,” Rubin replied, adding:
One, they essentially said that if they were to accept his argument of total immunity, and I’m looking at the opinion now on page 40, that it ‘would effectively shut down the entire government’ that presidential immunity I’m reading here on page 40 against federal indictment would mean that as to the president, ‘Congress could not legislate, the executive could not prosecute, and the judiciary could not review. We cannot accept that the office of the presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.’
Ana, the other thing that I want to bring to your and our viewers’ attention is that Trump made a calculated, risky move here in his arguments. He argued that a provision of the Constitution, known as the impeachment judgment clause, was part of what protected him from prosecution.
However, this court is saying on page 41, the strongest evidence against his claim of immunity is that same clause, the impeachment judgment clause, because it says that judgment in cases of impeachment shouldn’t go further than essentially removing a person from office, but that if convicted, the party nevertheless shall be liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment, and punishment.
“And it’s that, nevertheless, that’s doing a whole lot of work there, and that this court found was really important,” Rubin continued, explaining how prosecution regularly goes hand in hand with impeachment for corrupt officials.
“They also, sort of, in finding that that impeachment judgment clause doesn’t do much for former President Trump. They’re also really persuaded by real-life history and the words of even some of Trump’s political allies,” Rubin continued, adding:
You know, I note going through an opinion like this, one of the things a lawyer like me does is look at the footnotes first, because you can learn as much from the footnotes as you do from the main texts. And indeed, footnotes 12 and 13 on page 49 are really illustrative of their thinking, because they’re saying Trump has said that he can’t be prosecuted because he wasn’t impeached and convicted. But in this footnote, they say the history of the United States is replete with people who have been prosecuted pre-impeachment.
Because, remember, impeachment is not just a solution for former presidents. It applies to people like Article Three lifetime tenure judges. And they cite a number of examples here, that there have been hundreds of officers in the United States who have been subject to criminal proceedings for offenses for which they could have been impeached, but were not.
They also say, again, going back to the Senate debate and that second impeachment, that there were over 30 senators who made statements on the floor saying impeachment is not available for a former president. Our Constitution teaches that.
And the right solution here, where impeachment is not available is prosecution. And they have a note where they cite to the senators by name who made statements to that effect and count them up. So this D.C. circuit is literally taking names with respect to the evidence that they cite. It’s not just a litany of case law, but real life examples of senators whose floor statements are contrary to the position that former President Trump and his lawyers took in this appeal.
Watch the full clip here.
