Donald Trump’s latest stab for complete immunity is totally “absurd” from a purely constitutional perspective, Laurence H. Tribe, one of America’s leading constitutional scholars, said on Sunday.
Tribe flagged the purportedly contradicting argument on immunity on social media, asking, “Did anyone notice what Trump’s lawyer identified as the textual source of the novel immunity he claimed?”
“It was the Art II vesting of executive power in the president for 4-year time!” he added. “But that’s the very clause Trump’s attempted coup sought to shred! His argument is absurd.”
Former FBI special agent Asha Rangappa, who has also weighed in on Trump’s immunity case before the Supreme Court, agreed with Tribe’s assessment of the immunity argument.
“Trump’s lawyer claimed that absolute immunity comes from the Vestiture Clause, which vests executive power in the President. By attempting to block the certification, he was preventing power from vesting in the newly-elected President, i.e., making the Constitution itself inoperational,” she said Sunday. “Finding that immunity exists under these facts would allow the presidency to be a constitutional poison pill.”
Political and legal commentator Allison Gill, better known as “Mueller, She Wrote,” noted that retired conservative Judge Luttig “wrote an amazing Amicus brief about that very thing.”
“The executive vesting clause and Marbury are the two things Trump uses as his argument for immunity, when they’re actually the two best pieces of evidence against it,” she wrote.
