It’s a free country right? Especially with regard to free speech, and what lawyers say in a legal brief or in oral argument: other than insulting the judge and risking a contempt of court order, lawyers can just say the “darndest” things, recalling Art Linkletter’s wonderful interviews with so many little folks.
One of the “darndest” things in a U.S. court took place yesterday, when the attorney for Donald J. Trump told the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that a President, because of “immunity,” could not be criminally charged for any act, no matter how horrible or treacherous, unless the Congress had first impeached and convicted that President.
It had not occurred to me yesterday, but today we see the bizarre implications of that free, unfettered way of speaking. One of the judges asked Trump’s attorney this: if a President ordered a Navy Seal team to assassinate a political rival (by poison, if the President wanted to be like Putin), could the criminal justice system hold him (or her) accountable? No, said Attorney D. John Sauer, not unless the President had first been impeached and convicted. (That’s something, by the way, that has never happened: impeachment yes, but conviction? Not in U.S. history. Nixon probably would have been convicted, but resigned.)
Now, isn’t that the “darndest” thing? Several wags pointed out later that day that the “logic” of this argument is that Biden could now order Trump’s assassination and be free of any criminal proceedings, at least until Congress impeached and convicted him. But under impeachment rules from the U.S. Constitution, only 34 Senators are needed in Biden’s “camp” to protect him from conviction.
Leading to this query: might there even be some Republican Senators who would refuse to convict?