Op-ed by Summer Lane | Photo: Alamy
President Donald Trump attended a hearing on presidential immunity in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, where lawyers argued for and against whether a sitting president should have blanket immunity against criminal prosecution.
This issue has arisen from Trump’s election-related case in D.C., overseen by Judge Tanya Chutkan. President Trump has argued that he has absolute immunity from the charges because the case concerns allegations surrounding the 2020 presidential election. At the time, Trump was the sitting President of the United States.
He explained on Truth Social on Monday, “Of course I was entitled, as President of the United States and Commander in Chief, to Immunity. I wasn’t campaigning, the Election was long over. I was looking for voter fraud, and finding it, which is my obligation to do, and otherwise running running [sic] our Country.”
The president made a markedly strong point when he further stated, “If I don’t get Immunity, then Crooked Joe Biden doesn’t get Immunity, and with the Border Invasion and Afghanistan Surrender, alone, not to mention the Millions of dollars that went into his ‘pockets’ with money from foreign countries, Joe would be ripe for Indictment.”
He called such weaponization of the Department of Justice “a giant Pandora’s Box.”
The Pandora’s Box
Truly, lawfare has never been used so publicly and as intensely as it has been used against President Donald Trump over the past year. As the president faces a shocking 91 felony charges in four different cases, the nation has been forced to consider the circumstances for such over-the-top legal action.
Why weren’t any of these cases brought before Trump announced his intention to run for reelection? Why is every case being brought in a deep blue Democrat venue like New York or Fulton County, Georgia? Why do so many of the major players in the cases seem wholly inorganic?
Whether it’s Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis or Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, his legal opponents pursue him relentlessly and aggressively and are now attempting to strip away the one thing that presidents have broadly been entitled to: immunity.
The U.S. Supreme Court recognized this in 1973 in the midst of President Nixon’s somewhat infamous Watergate situation. One could argue that this was really the first legal recognition that a president was uniquely protected from criminal liability while serving in office.
Now, the argument has arisen once again as Trump’s political enemies seek to make it easier to hurt him in the courtroom. Unfortunately for the president’s opponents, the legal spear currently pointed at Trump could just as easily be pointed right back at themselves in the likely event that the 45th president sweeps to victory in November 2024.
That, of course, is the crux of Trump’s argument. Joe Biden is facing an impeachment inquiry amid swirling allegations of lucrative influence-peddling schemes with foreign nations. What’s more, Trump has pointed out that if presidential immunity no longer exists, Biden could even face the heavy hammer of justice for his legislative and military actions.
Examples of potential liability that Biden could face, according to Trump, are the unfettered invasion of the southern border and the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, which resulted in the surrender of billions of dollars of military equipment to the Taliban.
In the case of presidential immunity, Trump is right. It’s a Pandora’s Box that would set a precedent for using political weaponry. And, if Trump gets back into office in 2024, the nation could expect to see Joe Biden get a taste of his own lawfare medicine.
On Tuesday, Trump told the press outside the D.C. federal appeals courtroom, “I think this [lawfare] is the way they’re going to try and win…it’s a very bad thing, it’s a very bad precedent, as we said. It’s the opening of Pandora’s Box.”
