John Sauer, an attorney for Donald Trump argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday that a president ordering the killing of a political rival could constitute an ‘official’ act and therefore protects the president from prosecution.
During Supreme Court arguments on Trump’s claims of absolutely immunity in the federal election subversion case, Justice Sonia Sotomayor posed a hypothetical to Sauer: “If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?”
“It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that could well be an official act,” Sauer responded.
“He could. And why? Because he’s doing it for personal reasons,” Sotomayor said. “He’s not doing it like President Obama is alleged to have done it to protect the country from a terrorist. He’s doing it for personal gain. And isn’t that the nature of the allegations here, that he’s not doing them, doing these acts in furtherance of an official responsibility? He’s doing it for personal gain.”
Sauer argued that the indictment of Trump “confirms immunity because the characterization is that there’s a series of official acts that were done for an unlawful or corrupt reason.”
Sotomayor seems skeptical of Sauer’s argument.
“I am having a hard time thinking that creating false documents, that submitting false documents, that ordering the assassination of a rival, that accepting a bribe and countless other laws that could be broken for personal gain, that anyone would say that it would be reasonable for a president or any public official to do that.”
Lower courts have already rejected Trump’s argument that presidents have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions taken while in office.
In the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Sauer answered with a “qualified yes” when asked by Judge Florence Pan if a former president would not face prosecution even if he ordered SEAL Team Six to assassinate his political rival.
