Trump lawyers shredded by ex-prosecutor for 'argument unlike any I have ever seen'

Former President Donald Trump's attorneys were shredded by former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner in an MSNBC column for an "absurd" attempt to "rewrite the Constitution" to give him immunity from criminal prosecution.

This comes after a controversial oral argument before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, where Trump lawyer John Sauer tried to argue Trump could not be prosecuted for ordering a military assassination of a political opponent.

"All three judges — Karen LeCraft Henderson, J. Michelle Childs, and Florence Pan — were extremely skeptical of the arguments made by Trump lawyer John Sauer," wrote Kirschner. "There were so many ... unusual claims made by Sauer that it’s hard to know which was the most outlandish. But as I’ve reflected on the totality of his presentation — designed to persuade the court that it’s in our nation’s interest to allow a president to commit crimes with near-absolute immunity — I want to focus on the central contention on which the presidential-immunity argument rises or falls: the meaning of the Impeachment Judgments clause."

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Specifically, Kirschner noted, Sauer interpreted the final part of the clause — "the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law" — to mean that they cannot be criminally tried unless they were already convicted by impeachment.

"In an argument unlike any I have ever seen in my 30 years as a federal prosecutor, Sauer apparently decided he could rewrite that portion of the Constitution, and urged the judges to adopt what he’d like the Constitution to say," wrote Kirschner. "This rewriting of the Constitution landed poorly with the judges. Indeed, judges are not in the business of creating law, rewriting constitutional provisions or conjuring up rights out of thin air. The judges promptly disassembled Sauer’s creative constitutional construction."

The arguments this week made two things clear, Kirschner concluded. "One: Trump, through his attorney, was arguing in favor of a presidency defined by lawlessness and impunity. And, two: The judges will undoubtedly reject the America that Trump hopes for."