'That's permitted': Fox News expert echoes Sotomayor's warning on a Trump military coup

Legal analyst Mercedes Colwin told Fox News that the U.S. Supreme Court had cleared the way for former President Donald Trump to order a military coup if he's reelected.

Following a high court ruling granting U.S. presidential immunity for official acts, Colwin explained that Justice Sonia Sotomayor was not being "alarmist" when she warned about executive power.

"So everyone who's saying, oh, Judge Sotomayor, this is hyperbole. She's being an alarmist. No, she looked at those core constitutional issues," Colwin explained. "So when she said that a sitting president can now say to the military, I want to stay in power. Let's just do a military coup."

"Guess what? She's relating back to those core constitutional rights that sitting president has," she continued. "Absolute immunity, so that's permitted."

Colwin noted that Sotomayor had also been accused of hyperbole for warning that a president who accepted a bribe for a pardon would be immune.

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"No, she's going back to the rationale given by the [conservative] majority, which says that that is, that's the core constitutional right of the sitting president, and therefore, that means it is absolute immunity," she explained. "That's problematic."

Fox News host Howard Kurtz agreed.

"Accepting a bribe is something that came up in oral argument, and so, for example, appointing ambassadors is absolutely an official act in the Constitution, but if there's a bribe involved, to me, you know, these prosecutions become more difficult," he remarked.

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