Trump’s 'immunity' argument is a recipe for a 'dark American future': former federal prosecutor

When the U.S. Supreme Court rejected special counsel Jack Smith's request for an expedited review of former President Donald Trump's "presidential immunity" argument, the justices weren't saying that they will never review the matter — only that they want to keep it in the lower federal courts for now.

Trump and his lawyers are arguing that because he was still president during the lame duck period of late 2020/early 2021, Smith's election interference case against him should be thrown out — as he enjoys "immunity" from prosecution. Judge Tanya Chutkan flat-out rejected that argument, ruling that U.S. presidents don't enjoy a "divine right of kings" in the United States. But the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has been reviewing Trump's "immunity" claim.

In an op-ed published on January 24, the Daily Beast's Shan Wu — a former federal prosecutor — warns that Trump's "immunity" claim has dangerous implications that go way beyond Trump himself.

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"Let's make it simple: Presidents, police officers, and pedophile priests are not immune from criminal prosecution," Wu emphasizes. "No court has ever ruled that they are. Nor does the Constitution grant such immunity. Trump appears to think that the doctrine of qualified immunity — which is a form of immunity that protects government officials, including police, judges, legislators, and prosecutors, from being sued civilly in lawsuits over the performance of their duties — also protects these categories of officials from criminal prosecutions. But he's wrong."

The former federal prosecutor continues, "Qualified immunity does not protect anyone from criminal prosecutions. Quite to the contrary, President Richard M. Nixon resigned from the presidency because he feared that an indictment was imminent for his role in the Watergate case. His successor, President Gerald R. Ford, pardoned Nixon precisely because Nixon was not immune from criminal prosecution."

Wu argues that "if police had the kind of immunity that Trump thinks he should have," former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin "never would have been prosecuted at all" for murdering George Floyd in 2020.

"Trump is not content to rest his fate upon the unspoken and often unseen biases that have protected the powerful from accountability," Wu writes. "No, he wants to say the quiet part out loud by making it the law of the land that he cannot be prosecuted. This is the kind of dark American future Donald J. Trump seeks to keep himself out of jail."

READ MORE:Jack Smith slams Trump's 'baseless arguments' in Mar-a-Lago classified documents battle

Shan Wu's full Daily Beast op-ed is available at this link (subscription required).