"Trump, the historians said, "asserts that a doctrine of permanent immunity from criminal liability for a president's official acts, while not expressly provided by the constitution, must be inferred.
To justify this radical assertion, he contends that the original meaning of the constitution demands it. But no plausible historical case supports his claim."
"Holly Brewer, a professor of American cultural and intellectual history at the University of Maryland, said:
"When designing the presidency, the founders wanted no part of the immunity from criminal prosecution claimed by English kings.
"That immunity was at the heart of what they saw as a flawed system. On both the state and national level, they wrote constitutions that held all leaders, including presidents, accountable to the laws of the country.
St George Tucker, one of the most prominent judges in the new nation, laid out the principle clearly:
everyone is equally bound by the law, from beggars in the streets' to presidents."
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