While the president stumps around that he's untouchable and his lawyers even say before judges that he could order the assassination political opponents with impunity — his former attorney isn't entirely convinced.
CNN's Kaitlan Collins sparred with Jim Trusty on this point on Thursday, pushing back on his immunity-lite argument that deviates from one put forth by the ex-president's team.
She pointed out that the response from the Supreme Court intrinsically notes that they don't "buy the broad immunity claim right off the bat."
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The legal question SCOTUS stated it would analyze is "whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office."
Trusty cautioned reading the tea leaves too much.
"Though I do agree with you about the double jeopardy claim, that one never really grabbed me as having a lot of traction," he said. "Look, I think there's a little bit of overstatement which is when they talk about absolute immunity, it's still tempered by the need for the actions to be within the presidential responsibilities."
"So it's not really the king can do no wrong, period; it's, he has absolute immunity if the the actions are related to specific duties even the outer perimeter of the presidential duties."
He continued: "So it's a real nuanced term, but it basically comes closer to qualified immunity and it sounds like that's the area with the Supreme Court is going to be tempted to rule."
Collins countered.
"That's not really what Trump's team argued," she told him. "They bought in on that hypothetical that was floated by the judge about using SEAL Team Six to kill a political opponent."
"They said, technically, yeah, they did agree with that... I don't think anyone would consider that to be an official duty of the president right?" Trusty concurred with Collins on this. "I hope not," he said.
He chalked up the assassination what-if as something that was a mar on the otherwise cogent attempt to prove the ex-president's insulation from certain crimes.
"I mean, like I thought that was a bad moment in terms of kind of conceding to the hypothetical that way," he said. "And maybe the ultimate feeling tactically is 'We're going to shoot for the stars, but what we'd be thrilled if we land at the moon!' meaning we're overshooting, but we still have that kind of more limited version of immunity to play with."
