Maggie Haberman Blows Holes In New Trump Immunity Filing: ‘Taking Contradictory Positions’
New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman torpedoed former President Donald Trump’s new Supreme Court filing seeking total immunity, pointing out “they’re taking contradictory positions.”
Trump’s legal team submitted a lengthy filing Tuesday demanding “absolute immunity” for Trump in an appeal of an issue that has lost twice before in vociferous fashion.
On Tuesday night’s edition of CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, Haberman joined CNN analysts Adam Kinzinger and Jennifer Rodgers to break down the filing with anchor Anderson Cooper.
Haberman singled out the “contradictory positions” the Trump team is taking, as well as the reliance on quotes from Trump-appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh:
COOPER: Maggie, let’s start out with you.
I mean, first of all, what do you make of this latest filing? Not a surprise.
MAGGIE HABERMAN: No, it’s a continuation of an argument that they’ve used several times, perhaps more emphatically right now. I think that the Brett Kavanaugh writing is very intentionally done. We know this is a former president who has talked repeatedly in private about being unhappy with the Supreme Court justices who he appointed because they haven’t sided with him in his election lies previously.
Brett Kavanaugh is somebody who came under a lot of scrutiny and a lot of attack during his confirmation process. And I don’t think that that’s a coincidence that they’re using this. But look, they are looking toward oral argument and they are looking toward how the justices are going to respond to it. And it is not especially concerning to them that, as Evan noted, they are taking contradictory positions.
In one filing they say, well, he wasn’t impeached. And then in another they say, well, the criminal justice – during impeachment, they said the criminal justice system is where this should be dealt with. I just – I don’t think we can underscore enough how consequential Mitch McConnell’s speech was that day, not because he was so hard on Trump, but because of what he chose not to do, which was not to vote to convict and not to whip other Republicans to do the same.
COOPER: And, Jennifer, I mean, Trump’s lawyers, I want to read what he said. Let’s put it on the screen. He said if – their lawyers said, “If immunity is not recognized, every future president will be forced to grapple with the prospect of possibly being criminally prosecuted after leaving office every time he or she makes a politically controversial decision. That would be the end of the presidency as we know it and would irreparably damage our Republic.”
What do you make of that? I mean, what do you expect the Supreme Court to do here?
JENNIFER RODGERS: Yes. Well, except that this has never happened before. No president has ever faced that that concern before because no other president has done this before. Listen, I think that the court is going to look at his argument for absolute immunity, which is the argument that he has to make here, right? He can’t really make a more nuanced argument about, well, all of these things I did were part of my official duties as president and therefore I should be protected in the way that he could if he say ordered a drone strike and some DA somewhere tried to prosecute him or something.
What he did, he did as a candidate for his own personal benefit and his political benefit, not for his job as a president in the country. And that’s why he has to go big on this argument for absolute immunity. And he has to raise the specter of, oh, if you do this, everyone’s going to be prosecuted after this. Well, no one has been prosecuted before in the history of our country. No one who lives within the bounds of the law while their president will be prosecuted again. This is really about his actions and because those actions are outside of any reasonable scope of what the president is supposed to be doing, I think the court will have to set a standard that is below absolute immunity for sure.
Watch above via Anderson Cooper 360.
