'Outlandish': Jamie Raskin shows what Trump's latest argument says about his worldview
Trump's assertion he's immune from any criminal prosecution originating while serving as commander in chief is "utterly ludicrous" and reflects Trump's "deranged" worldview.
So says Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who made an appearance on CNN's "The Situation Room" on Tuesday.
He weighed in on the questions asked of Trump's lawyers by a panel of judges in federal court in D.C. to determine if he was shielded from any culpability one Jan. 6, 2021, when he's suspected of attempting to halt the certification of 2020 presidential election results and fomenting chaos to his supporters who stormed the Capitol Building.
"Donald Trump and his lawyers essentially asserted that the president has the right to assassinate people, to kill people without any prospect of prosecution unless they're first impeached by the House and convicted in the Senate," he paraphrased.
Judges threw out scenarios to prove if the president was insulated.
ALSO READ: Donald Trump’s un-American ploy for criminal immunity
“You’re saying a president could sell pardons, could sell military secrets, could order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival,” Judge Florence Pan said to Trump's attorney, D. John Sauer.
Sauer returned with a "qualified yes” about the assassinations or selling pardons, while conjecturing that selling military secrets “strikes me as something that might not be held to be an official act.”
Pressed further, Sauer said if Trump were to be exposed criminally he'd have to be "impeached and convicted" first.
"As a member of Congress, my first thought was, 'Well, then if the president is going to order out for the assassination of his political rivals and, say, there's a narrow margin in the Senate of a two or three votes in the opposition party — what's to keep him from murdering members of the Senate to make sure that he doesn't get convicted there in order to deny a two-thirds majority?"
"He can kill them because then he can't be impeached or convicted because he's murdered his opposition and he can't be prosecuted for it because he hasn't been impeached or convicted.'"
He then called the argument "utterly ludicrous."
"Nobody has ever even attempted such an absurd argument in American history, but it shows you how outlandish and deranged Donald Trump's world view is at this point."
Raskin warns there are serious consequences with Trump's alleged American monarchy aspirations.
"It's very dangerous because all of it revolves around political violence."