Supreme Court hears arguments in Trump presidential immunity case

[Music] welcome back in on Thursday the Supreme Court held a special session to consider whether Trump is immune from Criminal prosecution he says he is for official acts he made while he was president and during oral argument the Supreme Court focused on the role of the presidency presidents have to make a lot of tough decisions about enforcing the law and they have to make decisions about questions that are unsettled and they have to make decisions based on the information that's available do you really did did I understand you to say well you know if he makes a mistake he makes a mistake he's subject to the criminal laws just like anybody else you don't think he's in a special a a peculiarly precarious position you seem to be worried about the president being chilled I think that we would have a really significant opposite problem if the president wasn't chilled if someone with those kinds of powers the most powerful person in the world with the greatest amount of authority um could go into office knowing that there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes I'm trying to understand what the disincentive is from turning the Oval Office into um you know the the the the seat of criminal activity in this country joining us now to talk about oral argument Kelsey rikman the courthouse news service reporter who was there for the nearly three hours of it off the top do you have a readout of where you think the Court's leaning here no I think that's really notable that they spent almost 3 hours looking at this issue and it didn't seem like they were any closer to a solution there wasn't any it didn't seem like they wanted to give Trump absolute immunity but it did seem like the justices were interested in some form of protection notably Justice Amy con Barrett seemed to show her cards a little bit she is a trump appointee but she seemed to be closer to the government side here what did you make of what she had to say yeah it was really interesting how Amy con Barrett she tried to get Trump's lawyer to admit that there are certain things within the indictment that aren't official acts and uh Jack Smith and the special uh council's office could use those private actions that Trump took and uh go forward with a trial regardless of what happens with these official presidential actions so the argument here is Trump says he is immune for official acts as president and that he can't be charged and there seemed to be some agreement among the justices that there are certain Acts that a president can commit even criminal ones that are just absolutely Beyond criminal prosecution and those are like core article two Powers right the right to veto uh the right to appoint certain individuals uh what did you make of the justices kind of poking around at what that means and and the hypotheticals that came up you I think there was real concern from some of the conservative justices uh particularly Justice Cavanaugh about limiting the actions of the administration and putting the White House in this box where um a president would be uh they they would be held they they could yeah they would be constrained and they wouldn't be able to act um as an Administration needs to and as the country needs a president to act right the idea here is that a president can act boldly and needs to be able to not second guess himself and worry about the the the possibility of criminal prosecution when he's making you know really important in the in the moment decisions about National Security and other issues you bring up justice Bret Cavanaugh which I thought was also interesting you never know where he's necessarily going in to an oral argument but he worked for President George W bush and he had some pretty clear thoughts about protecting the office of the presidency he said I'm not thinking about this case I'm thinking about the next case what did you make of of of him showing his cards do you think that's where he's going or do you think that was just a part of the oral argument performance it it's hard to say um I I think it might be likely that he will write something about his views because he's he clearly has very strong View on this topic and and that's really interesting because he does have experience in an Administration um I think it's also interesting that you know the liberal justices they didn't seem as concerned with those type of things where Brett Kavanaugh was very very concerned yeah the liberal justices as you heard Justice katangi Brown Jackson talk about I'm actually worried about the opposite problem that we were just talking about you're worrying about a president being chilled I'm worried about a president thinking that he is above the law and can commit any crime with no consequence I want to ask you about timing here because you have covered the Supreme Court for a while um they have moved quicker than this in the past when there are emergency requests right yes uh notably in uh President Nixon's case you know the court can move fast when they want to they have chosen not to move that quickly in this case and um that will affect Trump's trial you know the trial was supposed to start in March it's not clear if it will go forward before the 2024 election right if they send the case back down to immediately go to trial and you figure there's about 90 days that judge Tanya chuckin will give them to go to trial we're looking at September at the earliest but it seems like maybe they're going to send it back down do you think this is a decision we get at the end of June I think that might be likely but we really never know what the Supreme Court is going to do until they do so and the Chief Justice asked a number of hypotheticals uh and really seemed to focus on how do we decide what an official Act is he even referenced asking if they should send it back down to the Circuit Court uh for further proceedings which again would further delay do you think he's cognizant that special Council really wants to move quickly here you know it's hard to know I'm I'm sure he's read the briefs where Jack Smith has urged the court to act fast but I I think sometimes the justices notice the gravity of an issue and they really want to take their time on things Kelsey ragman from Courthouse News service thank you so much for coming in the studio and joining us thank you for having me

Channel: FOX 5 Washington DC

Views: 22,753

Keywords: in-the-courts

Id: ZWqfaWdNk90

Length: 5min 57sec (357 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2024