#michael dreeben

S.V. Dáte at HuffPost:

WASHINGTON — A presidential order to the military to conduct a coup to keep him in office “might well be an official act,” Donald Trump’s lawyer told the Supreme Court Thursday on the question of whether Trump’s attempted coup is immune from prosecution. The extraordinary exchange was among several in lengthy oral arguments before the justices, who will now decide whether the former president will stand trial on federal charges based on his actions leading up to the violent assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump has been claiming that all his actions as president were “official acts” and therefore immune from prosecution entirely. While justices seemed skeptical of that assertion, most expressed concern that former presidents could be prosecuted in bad faith and for political reasons in the years to come.

“Reliance on the good faith of the prosecutor may not be enough,” Chief Justice John Roberts told Department of Justice lawyer Michael Dreeben. “I take that concern,” added Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. “I think it’s a real thing.” How justices decide to protect future presidents from prosecutions based on their legitimate official actions could decide whether Trump faces a trial at all before the November election on the Jan. 6 indictment. If the court orders trial judge Tanya Chutkan to hold an evidentiary hearing to weed out the “official” components of Trump’s actions versus the ones for his private or political gain, that hearing and potential appeals of her ruling could consume many more months. And if Trump wins back the White House, he could order prosecutors to drop all unresolved federal charges against him.

While Dreeben did not refer to the coming election at all, he repeated his boss special counsel Jack Smith’s request that the case be sent back to Chutkan with instructions that concerns about not punishing “official” acts be dealt with in jury instructions, rather than a separate hearing. “We would like to present that as an integrated picture to the jury so that it sees the sequence and the gravity of the conduct and why each step occurred,” Dreeben said. Trump’s lawyer, John Sauer, meanwhile came in for even more pointed questioning from most of the justices, but none more on point than Elena Kagan’s question about 40 minutes in.

“How about if the president orders the military to stage a coup?” Kagan asked. “That might well be an official act,” Sauer answered. Sauer also claimed that a presidential assassination of a political rival as well as the sale of nuclear secrets to a foreign power could also be defended as official acts immune from prosecution. Trump was not at the Supreme Court during the oral arguments Thursday but rather was in a different courtroom, in lower Manhattan, in the early phase of an unrelated criminal trial.

During the oral arguments for the Trump v. United States presidential immunity case at SCOTUS on Thursday, Trump lawyer John Sauer told the court that even a military coup would be immune from prosecution as an "official act."

See Also:

Robert Mueller May Have Found A Way Around Presidential Pardons

Ever since the investigation of President Trump’s possible connections to Russia began in the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, one question has repeatedly been raised: Will Trump pardon any associates who may be charged with collusion during the 2016 campaign? And if so, how might that impact the case Mueller and his team are building?

Apparently that very question has also been on…

Oral Argument Behavior 2017: What's New and What's To Be Expected #EmpiricalSCOTUS

Oral arguments have always been central to Supreme Court adjudication.  In early Supreme Court practice oral arguments were the primary means by which the justices learned about cases.  Currently, oral arguments convey less original information to the justices, but still are helpful tools for the justices to learn about dimensions in each case not brought out in the briefs, as well as for…

Robert Mueller May Have Found A Way Around Presidential Pardons

Ever since the investigation of President Trump’s possible connections to Russia began in the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, one question has repeatedly been raised: Will Trump pardon any associates who may be charged with collusion during the 2016 campaign? And if so, how might that impact the case Mueller and his team are building?

Apparently that very question has also been on…