Former President Donald Trump’s attorney on Thursday argued that a president could order the assassination of his political rival and stage a military coup without being prosecuted for it.
Jack Sauer, Trump’s lawyer, made the “absolute immunity” argument in a Supreme Court hearing in the Department of Justice election interference case against the former president. Trump’s team has repeatedly claimed that the ex-president can’t be prosecuted for “official acts” he did while in office.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Sauer, “If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military to assassinate him, is that within his official acts to which he has immunity?”
“That could well be an official act,” Sauer responded.
Sotomayor seemed taken aback at that line of reasoning.
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“How about if the president orders the military to stage a coup?” Kagan asked.
“I think it would depend on the circumstances,” Sauer said.
“I think it would depend on the circumstances.” That doesn’t sound very absolute then, if it depends. “Absolute” means absolute, not “well actually it would depend.” I think they have a particular set of use cases in mind for this “absolute immunity” thing.
I was about to say, you’re using language that sounds very different from “absolute” there, buddy. Absolute is an “all or nothing” word, you can’t say “well it’s absolute immunity but only for certain things”.