Pressed on the 'assassination' question, Team Trump doubles down
Pushing an audacious immunity claim, Donald Trump's defense attorneys keep confronting the "assassination" question and answering it an unsettling way.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/pressed-assassination-question-team-trump-doubles-rcna149494
When this flopped at the circuit court, the presumptive GOP nominee and his defense counsel took the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court, where as NBC News noted, the same question returned to the fore.
In a question to Sauer, Justice Sonia Sotomayor posed a hypothetical: If the president ordered the military to assassinate a rival he views as corrupt, is that within his official act for which he can get immunity? Sauer answered that, it would depend, but we can see that could well be an official act.
He was, by all appearances, quite sincere about this.
.......All of which left us with an unsettling dynamic:
Trumps defense counsel concocted an audacious immunity claim, rooted in the idea that a president can commit some of the most outrageous felonies imaginable.
Every federal judge whos ruled on the argument has fundamentally rejected it as ridiculous.
Team Trump continues to double down on the claim as if it has merit and its at least possible that an untold number of Supreme Court justices might be willing to rule in the Republicans favor.
Most high court observers tended to agree yesterday that the justices will not endorse Trumps expansive claims to absolute immunity. Its more likely that the Supreme Court will come up with some kind of new rule related to prosecutions and official acts, all of which will send the matter back to the district court and delay the process further.
And since the entire point of this absurd series of appeals is to run out the clock before Election Day 2024, the justices will be playing their part in effectively immunizing Trump from pre-election accountability for the most serious of the former presidents alleged felonies.
It was nevertheless against this backdrop that Team Trump once again confronted the assassination question, and answered it in a head-spinning way.