As the saying goes: it is not the crime; It’s concealment.
If former President Donald Trump has his way, a good cover-up will suffice.
In an argument before the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, Trump lawyer John Sauer said a former president could escape criminal culpability as long as he kept his conduct secret from Congress and he was not the subject of an indictment.
Trump asked the court to formally recognize broad legal immunity for presidents, with his lawyers arguing that impeachment and conviction would be the “gateway” to possible criminal prosecution.
Such a move, Trump hopes, would overturn Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment against him, alleging that he criminally obstructed Congress with a plot to overturn the results of the election 2020, which he lost.
During oral arguments Thursday, Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked what would happen if potential criminal conduct was not discovered until after a president had already left office.
“What if the criminal conduct was not discovered until after the president resigned, so there was no possibility of impeachment?” she asked.
Sauer said the framers of the U.S. Constitution “assumed the risk of insufficient enforcement” with the system they designed, which Sauer said requires impeachment first.
“The separation of powers prevents us from righting all wrongs, but it ensures that we do not lose our freedom,” Sauer said, quoting the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Trump was impeached – for the second time – by the US House of Representatives in the final days of his presidency over his attempts to overturn the election.
The U.S. Senate held a trial in February, after he had already left office, and fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict him. No American president has ever been convicted after impeachment.
Smith did not file his indictment against Trump until the summer of 2023 — more than two years after Trump left office.
While some of the behavior described in the indictment refers to Trump’s overt attempts to pressure members of Congress into not now certifying President Joe Biden’s victory, other elements of the indictment indictment refers to details that were not fully known during his presidency.
businessinsider
