Donald Trump's absolute immunity case had its day in the highest court in the land on Thursday and despite the Supreme Court justices' overall dim reaction — his attorneys are still thundering with absolute certainty they're right.
Attorney William Scharf, a Republican candidate in Missouri's attorney general race, appeared opposite CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins to bang former president's drum that he should be untouchable in his official acts as president.
He attempted to tamp down on what he called a "parade of horribles," referring to some of the hypotheticals that have been raised by Supreme Court justices and before that the three-judge panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals — about granting the president with blanket immunity to for instance assassinate political rivals or launch military coups.
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And doing so without any repercussions.
Said Scharf: "What we're talking about here though is the scope of immunity that presidents need to be able to rely on to discharge their core Article Two responsibilities as president; without immunity I think you'll end up in a situation where presidents will essentially be blackmailed by their political rivals with the threat of political prosecution the day they leave office — and to me that's a very scary scenario."
Collins pushed back.
She brought up Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson whose specific questioning appeared to grill Trump's attorneys who attempted to distinguish between what is considered a personal act versus an official act.
Jackson feared without some kind of limitations the presidency could morph into a “seat of criminality."
"Do you disagree with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson," Collins pointedly asked Scharf, before paraphrasing the justice's statement.
Scharf tried to say that immunity, as his client believes is innate as POTUS, is "inherent in the constitutional design."
He continued: "So that's the system we've been operating under for hundreds of years."
In this moment Collins pounced, informing Scharf, "Immunity is not actually in the Constitution."
Caught a bit off guard, Scharf then tried to explain that the spirit of it is in keeping with the country's more coveted document.
"We believe that immunity naturally follows from the Constitution the same way that civil immunity, which isn't written in the Constitution, naturally follows from our constitutional system."
