He added, “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 our Country.”
No evidence of widespread voter fraud has ever been produced, despite Trump’s protestations to the contrary. He has also reacted with fury when aides and officials — including his then-Attorney General Bill Barr in the waning days of his presidency — have pushed back against his hyperbolic or outright false assertions.
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Richard Painter, a law professor and former Republican who left the party in 2018 because of Trump, told this column that he does not believe the Trump team’s legal argument “has any merit whatsoever.”
Painter contended that nothing in the Constitution nor in case law supports the idea that a president enjoys blanket immunity.
He also expressed deep skepticism that Trump would prevail even before a Supreme Court that has a 6-3 conservative majority. Three of the conservative justices are Trump nominees.
“A conservative Court is also interested in its own power and the power of the courts more broadly,” Painter argued. “The idea of putting the President of the United States beyond the reach of the judiciary would be anathema to the most conservative justices on this Court.”
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Doug Heye, a former communications director for the Republican National Committee, argued that, in general, if a political opponent is teetering, “you either push them over or keep your hands back because they are falling on their own.”
But referring to Trump’s primary rivals, he said, “In this case, we have seen them reinforce Trump’s message by using the same language — about a ‘weaponized justice system’ and so forth.”
Referring to Republican voters who are skeptical of Trump, Heye contended, “His own opponents didn’t even give them somewhere else to go.”
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