Pressed on the 'assassination' question, Team Trump doubles down

[LetMyPeopleVote]

Pushing an audacious immunity claim, Donald Trump's defense attorneys keep confronting the "assassination" question — and answering it an unsettling way.

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/pressed-assassination-question-team-trump-doubles-rcna149494

When this flopped at the circuit court, the presumptive GOP nominee and his defense counsel took the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court, where as NBC News noted, the same question returned to the fore.

In a question to Sauer, Justice Sonia Sotomayor posed a hypothetical: If the president ordered the military to assassinate a rival he views as corrupt, “is that within his official act for which he can get immunity?” Sauer answered that, “it would depend,” but “we can see that could well be an official act.”

He was, by all appearances, quite sincere about this.

Link to tweet

.......All of which left us with an unsettling dynamic:

Trump’s defense counsel concocted an audacious immunity claim, rooted in the idea that a president can commit some of the most outrageous felonies imaginable.
Every federal judge who’s ruled on the argument has fundamentally rejected it as ridiculous.
Team Trump continues to double down on the claim as if it has merit — and it’s at least possible that an untold number of Supreme Court justices might be willing to rule in the Republican’s favor.
Most high court observers tended to agree yesterday that the justices will not endorse Trump’s expansive claims to absolute immunity. It’s more likely that the Supreme Court will come up with some kind of new rule related to prosecutions and “official acts,” all of which will send the matter back to the district court and delay the process further.

And since the entire point of this absurd series of appeals is to run out the clock before Election Day 2024, the justices will be playing their part in effectively immunizing Trump from pre-election accountability for the most serious of the former president’s alleged felonies.

It was nevertheless against this backdrop that Team Trump once again confronted the “assassination” question, and answered it in a head-spinning way.

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Throughout history, fascism is a prelude to war

[Hekate]

2. KnR

[moondust]

3. Mr. Sauer belongs

in a rubber room. Next to his insane client.

[Sky Jewels]

4. One of the liberal justices should ask:

Would a president be able to order the assassination of a Supreme Ct. justice if he felt that that justice is a corrupt rival?