During Tuesday’s ، argument before the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, lawyers for former president Donald T،p asked the three-judge panel to believe that up is down and down is up. John Sauer, w، represented T،p, turned inside out the clear language of the Cons،ution, and tried to blithely cast aside positions taken by other T،p lawyers during his second impeachment trial.
Cynics w، believe that lawyers will say anything to win a case would not have been surprised by Sauer’s verbal gymnastics. As Henry David T،reau once observed, “A lawyer’s truth is not the truth… but a consistent expediency.”
But even for them, Sauer’s performance strained credulity.
With T،p looking on, Sauer had the unenviable task of trying to remake the legal world, as well as ordinary logic, to fit with the way T،p sees things. Not surprisingly, the judges did not seem to be buying what Sauer was selling.
As Judge Karen Henderson, a George H.W. Bush appointee, observed, “I think it’s paradoxical to say that… [a president’s] cons،utional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate criminal law.”
Before looking more closely at Sauer’s Houdini-like efforts, let’s recall that the heart of T،p’s case is the contention that the President of the United States is above the law. When Federal District Judge Tanya Chutkan, w، is presiding over the election interference case brought a،nst T،p by Special Counsel Jack Smith, turned aside T،p’s immunity claim, she noted that the former president was asking her to convey on him “the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens.”
As the lawyer George Conway puts it, “T،p’s main argument on this appeal is that presidents can’t be prosecuted for their official acts. That argument is based on a line of civil cases establi،ng that presidents can’t be held liable via monetary damages for their official actions—more specifically, as the Supreme Court held in 1981 in Nixon v. Fitzgerald, there is ‘absolute Presidential immunity from damages liability for acts within the ‘outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility.’”
Sauer tried to convince the court of appeals to apply that proposition in the criminal context by arguing that “To aut،rize the prosecution of a president for his official acts would open a Pandora’s box from which this nation may never recover.”
He offered two examples of the “parade-of-،rribles” that might be unleased if the court ruled that a former president could be prosecuted, neither of which were ،ogous to the crimes T،p allegedly committed. “Could George W. Bush,” Sauer asked, “be prosecuted for obstruction of an official proceeding for allegedly giving false information to Congress to induce the nation to go to war in Iraq under false pretenses? Could President Obama be ،entially charged with ، for allegedly aut،rizing drone strikes targeting U.S. citizens located abroad?”
But the judges did not take the bait. Instead Judge Florence Pan, making her own point about the “divine right of kings,” asked Sauer, “I understand your position to be that a president is immune from criminal prosecution for any official act, even if that action is taken for an unlawful or uncons،utional purpose. Is that correct?”
Sauer responded yes, t،ugh he noted that a president could be subject to a criminal prosecution if, and only, if he was impeached in the House and convicted by the Senate.
Here, Sauer turned the language of the Cons،ution on its head.
That language states that the House of Representatives “shall have the sole Power of Impeachment” (Article I, section 2) and that “the Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments … [but] no person shall be convicted wit،ut the Concurrence of two-thirds of the Members present” (Article I, section 3).
So far so good.
However, Sauer ran into problems with Article I, Section 3, Clause 7. It says that the penalties for an impeached and convicted individual are limited to removal from office and a bar from ،lding future office and that “the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.”
Sauer wants the court to ،ld that Article 1, Section 3, Clause 7 does not mean what it clearly says. In his view, it means that the president only can be subject to the criminal process if he is convicted by the Senate.
That reading does violence to the text and history of the Cons،ution. It also would give 34 senators the power to immunize a president from criminal prosecution for even the most reprehensible deeds by voting to acquit on an impeachment charge (since conviction in the Senate requires a 2/3 vote).
Judge Pan drove ،me the danger of Sauer’s position when she asked him if “a president w، ordered SEAL Team 6 to ،،inate a political rival” could be criminally prosecuted. In response, Sauer a،n insisted on his perverse reading of Article 1, Section 3, Clause 7 and reiterated that a president could only be prosecuted for such an act if he was first impeached, convicted, and removed from office by Congress.
He offered a vision of presidential power that comports with T،p’s own contention that under Article II of the Cons،ution, which defines the power of the president, “ I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”
As The Atlantic’s David Graham argues, Sauer’s argument was also “a logical, if scary, extension” of what T،p said in 2016 about the devotion of his followers. “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and s،ot some،y, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?” he told a rally in Iowa. “It’s, like, incredible.”
In 2023, what is incredible to people w، believe in the rule of law is that T،p wants the courts to turn his musings into cons،utional doctrine.
During Tuesday’s ، argument Sauer was also asked to reconcile his position on the president’s immunity from prosecution with what T،p’s lawyers said about the same issue during his impeachment trial in February 2021.
In his opening statement, Bruce Castor had argued that if the Senate did not convict T،p of the high crimes and misdemeanors charged by the House of Representatives he still could be arrested and charged with a crime. As Castor observed, “A high crime is a felony, and a misdemeanour is a misdemeanour. After he’s out of office, you go and arrest him. The Department of Justice does know what to do with such people.”
Another of T،p’s lawyers, David Sc،en, also conceded the point that a former president would not be immune from criminal prosecution for acts carried out while in office. As S،en put it, “We have a judicial process in this country. We have an investigative process in this country to which no former office،lder is immune. That is the process that s،uld be running its course. That is … the appropriate one for investigation, prosecution and punishment.”
On Tuesday, Sauer tried to square the circle by arguing that T،p’s impeachment lawyers had only recognized that “we have a judicial process in this country, period.” They “did not say that we could never raise an immunity defense” in response to criminal prosecution.
Judge Pan would have none of it. T،p, she insisted, “was president at the time, and his position was that no former office،lder is immune, and in fact, the argument was there’s no need to vote for impeachment because we have this backstop, which is criminal prosecution, and it seems that many senators relied on that when voting to acquit.”
Graham characterized the performances of lawyers like Sauer by noting, “What lawyers say in court is not the same as what politicians say or will do in office, but no normal politician would allow such an argument to be made on his behalf, especially while sitting in the courtroom.” But he rightly warned that whether T،p wins in court, “Today’s legal argument could very well be next year’s exercise of presidential power.”
منبع: https://verdict.justia.com/2024/01/11/the-incredible-inconsistent-incoherent-legal-arguments-about-presidential-immunity-made-by-donald-t،ps-lawyer