Listen: Trump’s top Senate allies try – and fail – to defend his immunity claim
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump is demanding a federal court grant him blanket immunity from prosecution for anything he did during his four years in the White House.
But even some of Trump’s top allies in Congress rejected Trump’s latest legal claim.
That doesn’t mean they didn’t try to take Trump’s side – until they inadvertently threw him under the proverbial bus during interviews with Raw Story.
“Honestly no, I don't think the president can break the law,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told Raw Story while walking next to the subway tram underneath the U.S. Capitol. “Because if he does, while he's in office, the remedy would be impeachment.”
“And then?” Raw Story pressed.
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“Then afterwards, if he's broken the law – hasn't been impeached but he broke the law – you know, he would be subject to prosecution as well,” Johnson – who the U.S. House’s select Jan. 6 committee said tried to orchestrate a slate of fake Wisconsin presidential electors in 2020 – explained. “I'm not a lawyer, not a prosecutor, but I don't think being president provides a blanket pardon to a president during his term in office. I don't think that's correct.”
Why the seemingly contradictory answers from the third-term senator?
“There's not a real easy answer. There's all kinds of different circumstances, all kinds of different actions the president could take, but he should be immune from certain actions,” Johnson said. “So it’s a little more complex issue than the way you're asking, quite honestly.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) walks through the Senate subway at the U.S. Capitol on September 11, 2023 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Still, Raw Story kept asking Trump’s congressional allies: “Can a president break the law?”
“No,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) – the first U.S. senator to endorse Trump in the 2024 election cycle – told Raw Story on Tuesday.
“No?”
“Why should they?” Tuberville replied. “I mean, like everybody else.”
“So, anyone else can break the law, but can a president?” Raw Story asked.
“American citizen like everybody else, gotta go for the law,” Tuberville said.
“So they can break the law?”
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“They do. They do. You gotta be convicted,” Tuberville said. “Well, I mean, there's probably a lot of things – small things – that a president can do to make decisions that he has the power to do that we don't.”
When pressed on Trump’s lawyer’s claims in federal court, Tuberville conceded he’s not read up on the specifics, and hasn’t been following the case that much.
“No,” Tuberville said. “I don’t know enough about it.”
Tuberville’s not alone.
“Can a president break the law?” Raw Story asked Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY).
“Woah, that's kind of a good question, because you didn’t say, ‘former,’” Lummis said, as her laughter evolved into deep pondering. “I, I, I – ugggh. Well, that's a very loaded question.”
Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY). (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
She continued: “The short answer is yes, but it requires a lot of explanation to get to yes. I'm hesitant, because there's so many vagaries.”
That seems to be the same reason why on Tuesday, Judge Florence Pan – a member of the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit hearing the case – attempted to take Trump’s lawyer’s claim of blanket presidential immunity from hypotheticals to the real-world.
She inquired whether a president could sell pardons or order Navy SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival.
Whatever the ruling – which is expected to be expedited – the case is also expected to be appealed. Many court watchers expecting the question of presidential immunity to eventually land on the desks of the nation’s nine Supreme Court justices.
“My guess is the Supreme Court would rule that a president can be prosecuted for a crime, but, again, there are other things that a president would be immune from, just in terms of his actions,” Johnson of Wisconsin predicted.
Trump, who is the hands-down favorite to win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination over rivals that include Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie and Vivek Ramaswamy, is also facing 91 felony charges across four separate criminal cases.
Johnson says he’s not following Trump’s cases too closely, because there’s nothing he or others in Congress can do now that the issue is winding through the nation’s judicial system.
“We'll see what the courts decide,” Johnson said. “That’s our system.”