Federal appeals Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson grilled attorney John Sauer as he argued that former President Donald Trump was entitled to absolute immunity from indictment for election subversion.
During Tuesday oral arguments before the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, Henderson became frustrated with Sauer.
Henderson wanted to know how Trump could be allowed to commit crimes if he was the chief law enforcement officer. She called that view "paradoxical."
"Well, I think you're missing what I'm asking, which is, I think it's paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate criminal laws," the judge said. "Now we're at the motion to dismiss stage. The government has charged the specific criminal laws. We have to assume they're true."
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Sauer made an argument that Henderson had already dismissed.
"I thought you agreed with me that we've gotten beyond Marbury in the sense that official acts has been subdivided into discretionary and duty-bound or ministerial," Henderson said. "And in the ministerial or duty-bound, at least with respect to even legislators and judges, they have been held criminally liable."
"And that's in the face, at least with respect to the legislators, of an explicit constitutional privilege," she added.
