'Fundamentally evil': Sotomayor rips attorney who says Trump could assassinate rivals
John Sauer, an attorney for Donald Trump, told the U.S. Supreme Court that his client could have legally assassinated his rivals.
The arguments were made Thursday during Supreme Court arguments on the U.S. government's election interference case against Trump.
"There are some things that are so fundamentally evil that they have to be protected against," Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted regarding presidential immunity. "If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?"
"It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that could well be an official act," Sauer replied.
"It could and why?" Sotomayor pushed back. "Because he's doing it for personal reasons. He's not doing it like President Obama is alleged to have done it, to protect the country from a terrorist. He's doing it for personal gain."
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"And isn't that the nature of the allegations here?" she said. "That he's not doing them, doing these acts in furtherance of an official responsibility. He's doing it for personal gain."
Sauer said the indictment of Trump "confirms immunity because the characterization is that there's a series of official acts that were done for an unlawful or corrupt person."
"No, because immunity says even if you did it for personal gain, we won't hold you responsible," Sotomayor interrupted. "How could that be?"
The justice noted that "the founders actually talked about whether to grant immunity to the president, and in fact, they had state constitutions that granted some criminal immunity to governors, and yet, they didn't take it up."
"We would be creating a situation in which we would be saying is, this is what you're asking us to say, which is that a president is entitled not to make a mistake, but more than that, a president is entitled for total personal gain to use the trappings of his office," she added. "That's what you're trying to get us to hold without facing criminal liability."