Hello everyone!
If you’ve checked the news recently, there’s a very good chance that you’ve come across the news stories regarding former president Donald Trump’s legal woes. A solution that Trump has been trying to force through the courts is that he has full legal immunity for any action he committed as president. I’ll walk you through his legal team’s reasoning, then analyze its legal standing myself.
Trump’s Claim
The first argument by Trump’s lawyer, D. John Sauer is the “Pandora’s box.” If presidents could be prosecuted for actions as president, they reason, it would make it impossible for presidents to accomplish tasks, as it would dramatically increase their vulnerability. His second argument is regarding the impeachment clause: a president can only be prosecuted if he’s already been impeached by the House of Representatives.
This is the Impeachement Clause:
Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to remove from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States, but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.
Sauer’s claim relies heavily on the term “nevertheless.”
Are They Right?
The courts and I agree: Trump does not have legal immunity. The first aspect of his case is a fallacy because it only deals in hypotheticals, in what ifs. And, as Judge Henderson (one of three on a panel for one of Trump’s court visits) stated succinctly, “I think it’s paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate the criminal law.” It would be fundamentally counterintuitive to allow the Chief Executive, the person ordered to be the greatest defender of the nation’s laws, to be able to bypass it himself.
Trump’s argument of immunity via the Impeachment Clause doesn’t work in the court of law because it is a very twisted reading. In reality, the Impeachment Clause isn’t saying that a president can’t be prosecuted if they haven’t been impeached, but that in the event of an actual impeachment legal charges can still follow. This is the opposite of Sauer, and the courts seem to agree: Judge Chatkun said that, “From the statement, ‘if the animal is a cat, it can be a pet,’ it does not follow that ‘if the animal is not a cat, it cannot be a pet.’”
The courts thus far have agreed completely with my reasoning, and in fact, much of the above arguments were actually derived from their past rulings: Trump lost his first case, and now the D.C. Court of Appeals rejected his arguments unanimously. He may take his case to the Supreme Court, but given the strong stance taken by the lower courts, he should not be optimistic about his chances. You might say that Trump has reason to be Sauer.