Trump Seemingly Agrees With Idea Prez Can Assassinate Rivals Scot-Free
“You have to have immunity for a president,” he said when asked whether he should be able to skirt charges for assassinating a rival while in office.
Donald Trump, when asked Thursday if he agreed with his lawyers’ argument that he would be immune from prosecution if he were to order Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political opponent while president, seemed to love the concept.
“You have to have immunity for a president,” he told reporters in New York upon the conclusion of closing arguments in his civil fraud trial.
Trump’s lawyers had argued before the D.C. Court of Appeals this week that their client, as president, could only be prosecuted for such an act if he were first convicted by the Senate.
Notably, in his impeachment trial over Jan. 6, one of Trump’s lawyers made the reverse argument: that a guilty verdict was unnecessary because the prosecutorial system could handle the matter instead.
Nevertheless, Trump went ahead and pushed his immunity claims, which are being hashed out in advance of his criminal trial in Washington, D.C.
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“On immunity, very simple: if a president of the United States does not have immunity, he’ll be totally ineffective because he won’t be able to do anything, because it will mean he’ll be prosecuted, strongly prosecuted perhaps, as soon as he leaves office by the opposing party,” Trump said.
“If you don’t have immunity… you won’t be making any decisions. So you have to have it,” he claimed.
Trump then compared his position to that of law enforcement, but didn’t fully explain what officers should be immune from.
“I liken it to the fact that police have to have their control back. They have to have respect. And you can always have a bad apple, you can always have something happen, but at the same time, you have to stop crime in this country,” he said.
“But you have to have immunity for a president, and I think most people are seeing that,” he went on. “I’ve read a lot of real reports lately, and scholarly reports that are saying you really have to have—a president of this country has to have immunity, or they’re not going to be able to function in office.”
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