CNN anchor Caitlan Collins grilled former President Trump’s lawyers about Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s questioning of the former president’s presidential immunity case in the Supreme Court on Thursday.
“Under what circumstances is ordering a military coup an official act of the president?” Collins said that there were communications between Kagan and President Trump’s attorney D. This was in reference to Kagan’s question about presidential immunity if he orders a coup d’état.
“When we talk about official action, we don’t look at its intent or purpose; we look at its underlying character,” Schaaf replied. “If that’s the case, if a situation like that unfolds using the official powers of the president, you know there’s a public dimension to it.”
The two sides exchanged opinions, and Collins later said that Schaaf had made “a pretty brazen claim that a military coup could be a public act.”
Schaaf countered that the argument was not aimed at justifying such a thing, but rather at defining the scope of the immunity the president has exercised while in office.
“Just because a military coup or this kind of horrific parade is an official act doesn’t mean they’re right, it doesn’t mean they’re allowed under our constitutional system, it doesn’t mean we’re allowed to do it. No, it justifies it in some way,” he said. “But what we are talking about here is the scope of immunity that the president must be able to rely on in order to carry out the core provisions of his presidential responsibilities.”
When the Supreme Court held a hearing Thursday on President Trump’s immunity claim, Sauer responded to a question about whether the president’s ordering “the military to stage a coup” was Kagan’s “official act.” There’s a good chance that’s the case.”
On the same day as the Supreme Court hearing, the former president was in a New York courtroom for a hush money case that began last week. The case is the first criminal trial against a former U.S. president. He was charged with falsifying business records related to repaying then-lawyer Michael Cohen, who paid the adult film actor $130,000 to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Trump before the 2016 election. He has been charged with a crime, but he denies it. .
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