Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has declared that he doesn’t support President Donald Trump’s claim of presidential immunity.
McConnell made the comments on the same day the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments about whether presidents have immunity from prosecution for official acts they committed while in office.
However, McConnell said in an interview with NBC News’s “Meet the Press” that he didn’t believe in the concept.
When host Kristin Welker asked McConnell if he thought presidents should have immunity for official acts, he said:
“Obviously, I don’t think that, but it’s not up to me to make that decision.”
“The president clearly needs some kind of immunity, or he’d be in court all the time,” he added.
“So, we’ll just see how the Supreme Court deals with it.”
Trump’s lawyers are pressing the concept of presidential immunity to help with some of his indictments.
They argued his case for three hours before the court on Thursday.
McConnell seems to think Trump did commit some illegal acts while president.
However, the Senate GOP leader still voted to acquit Trump during the impeachment in 2021 after January 6’s Capitol protests.
At the time of his vote, McConnell said Trump hadn’t “gotten away with anything yet” and was liable for what he did while in office.
“We’re gonna find out, aren’t we?” he said in the interview with NBC.
“I mean, the Supreme Court is going to deal with that direct issue that I was referring to on Feb. 13, 2021.
“And I think we’ll find out sometime soon.”
During the arguments, the justices did not seem to be going for the argument that a president was immune even from an attempted coup.
However, it did seem like they could go for some level of protection from criminal prosecution.
If the court does extend immunity protection to Trump, it would negate many of the criminal charges he now faces.
Some of the charges related to classified documents might still be able to be considered since they involve alleged actions taken after he left office.
On the one hand, Justice Samuel Alito said presidents could be in a “peculiarly precarious position” if they are at risk of being prosecuted by their successors.
Yet, that’s exactly what is happening to Trump.
This was made obvious by the fact that Hillary Clinton did exactly what Biden’s Justice Department accuses Trump of (buying the Steele Dossier with campaign money rather than paying off accusers).
Of course, Democrat Clinton was never prosecuted for it.
On the other hand, certainly, presidents could abuse their immunity if it were absolute.
It seems like the court will thread the needle in some fashion, but it wasn’t immediately clear what that would look like.
