A conservative lawyer explained that President Donald Trump waited years to make his key defense in a defamation case because he "forgot" it.
During an episode of The Illegal News, congressional candidate and former MAGA insider George Conway talked about Trump's case against E. Jean Carroll. The Trump administration's Solicitor General recently asked the Supreme Court to overturn Carroll's successful $83.3 million defamation lawsuit against Trump.
The Solicitor General is arguing that Trump isn't liable for the defamatory statements he made against Carroll because he was president when he made them.
The argument is based on the idea of presidential immunity, but Trump didn't make the argument earlier because he "forgets to assert the immunity" during the original proceedings, Conway said while recounting the timeline.
"Now he's arguing that this judgment should be reversed," Conway said. "Even though he didn't make the presidential immunity argument for like three or four years."
Conway argued that Trump can't revive an immunity defense he sat on for years, comparing it to the way lawmakers can't waive and then reclaim the immunity that protects their official speech. Trump is "a big boy" who should have known to raise it first, Conway said.
The reason the argument never came up during the original proceedings, Conway said, was that Trump's former attorney, Alina Habba, shot it down. Trump's team instead spent years fighting on separate grounds tied to the Westfall Act, which drove the case into what Conway called a "procedural morass."
Conway added that it would be "remarkable" if the Supreme Court decided to take the case, saying the justices avoid fact-heavy disputes.