Trump Team's Immunity Argument Contradiction

*In early 2021, Trump's lawyers said during his second impeachment trial that there was no need for the Senate to convict the former president, because the matter was better left to the judiciary.

*In early 2024, Trump's lawyers said the former president's alleged crimes can't be left to the judiciary, because the Senate didn't vote to convict.

"We have a judicial process in this country; we have an investigative process in this country to which no former officeholder is immune," Trump attorney David Schoen said at the time. "That is ... the appropriate one for investigation, prosecution and punishment, with all of the attributes of that branch." Schoen went on to argue that the courts were better prepared, because Congress "does not and cannot offer the safeguards of the judicial system."

Soon after, Bruce Castor, another member of Trump legal team, was even candid on this point: "If my colleagues on this [Democratic] side of the chamber actually think that President Trump committed a criminal offense ... after he is out of office, you go and arrest him."

How are the former president and his lawyers resolving the contradiction? By ignoring it and hoping others don't notice.

Steve Benen

Sotomayor verbalized this Catch-22 by noting that if the immunity arguments peddled by Trump's attorney yesterday were taken at face value then Congress would be unable to ever impeach any President because there would be no "high crime or misdemeanor" under which they could be charged, and that clearly was not the intent of the Founders when they wrote the impeachment language.

The abject hackery shown by the male SCOTUS members yesterday as they bent over backwards to create hypotheticals wholly unrelated to the set of facts before them flies in the face of America's history in jurisprudence up until this moment where the ethos that no one person is above the law was presumed inviolate.

Not anymore.

Trump's lawyers went in front of his Senate jurors and told them that the court system was where Donald should be held accountable for crimes if that is what the investigations and grand jurors decided. Yesterday, Trump's lawyers went before the highest court in the land and made the argument that Trump's actions while in office forever precludes him from any prosecution in court because the House and Senate did not complete an impeachment conviction beforehand.

These hacks should have been thrown out on their arses for having the hubris of raising completely contradictory arguments diametrically opposed to each other that if implimented would create conditions where no President could be held accountable for anything they do while seated in office as long as they can claim it was done as a part of their presidential perogative.