Although the US Supreme Court ruled in Donald Trump's favor Monday, deciding that the MAGA leader should be immune from federal prosecution when it comes to "official acts," one legal expert writes in a Thursday, July 3 op-ed published by CNN that the ruling is not the win many think it is for the former president.
Norman Eisen — a former White House ethics lawyer — argues, "Trump is not immune in his 34 felony convictions in Manhattan or the Georgia prosecution, and his current and coming efforts to invoke the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in both places will surely fail."
Eisen writes that in both the hush money case and Georgia case, "the alleged actions related to his campaign were purely personal and political and are clearly unofficial conduct not 'within the core of his official duties' as president."
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Furthermore, although New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan — who presided over Trump's Manhattan hush money trial — postponed Trump’s sentencing to September 18, Eisen emphasizes, "When that happens, the convictions should not and almost certainly will not be disturbed."
The CNN legal analyst then points out that Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his opinion: "There is no immunity for unofficial acts," therefore, "Conspiring to unlawfully interfere in the presidential election as a private citizen by paying hush money to an adult film actress and then falsifying business records to cover it up is not even 'within the outer perimeter' of a president’s official responsibilities, as Trump’s team argued."
Furthermore, Neisen offers three reasons why Trump's letter to Merchan "fails on the merits."
He explains:
First, Trump’s 2018 Office of Government Ethics financial filing disclosing the payment to his former attorney Michael Cohen was properly admitted because, even if completing it was an official act for which Trump cannot be prosecuted, it is a public record — and as the Supreme Court explained, 'Of course the prosecutor may point to the public record to show the fact that the President performed the official act.' Introducing this type of routine publicly available filing poses absolutely no 'dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch' that the opinion is concerned with.
Second, the prosecution introduced at trial some of Trump’s tweets, likely all of which reflect private, not official, conduct and thus were properly admitted in evidence
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Lastly, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington co-founder submits that although "Trump may seek to challenge testimony from two" of his ex-White House staffers — former executive assistant Madeleine Westerhout and former communications director Hope Hicks — "their testimony focused on their knowledge of Trump’s personal, not official, conduct — including the process by which Trump reimbursed Cohen and what Trump thought of Cohen’s purely non-governmental activities relating to the hush money."
Regarding the former president's Georgia indictment for 2020 election interference, Eisen simply explains:
Although Trump will argue that he was merely ensuring the integrity of a federal election, the 'close analysis' of the federal indictment’s 'extensive and interrelated allegations' that the Supreme Court requires will show this was personal and political, not official, conduct. Indeed, the federal courts have already held that the conduct at issue in the Georgia indictment is political, not official, in the context of a failed effort by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to remove the case from state court (albeit on other legal grounds).
The veteran ethics lawyer emphasizes the Supreme Court's ruling is highly unlikely to "save Trump from facing accountability for conspiring to change the outcome of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election."
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Norm Eisen's full op-ed is available here.
