'Unhinged': More than a dozen far-right groups urge SCOTUS to give Trump absolute immunity

30 March 2024

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) will be hearing oral arguments both in favor of and against former President Donald Trump's claim of absolute broad presidential immunity in less than a month. And a significant number of groups have already submitted arguments to the Court asking that justices grant it.

According to Daily Beast reporter Jose Pagliery, 18 groups have submitted what he called amicus (meaning "friend of the court") briefs to SCOTUS totaling nearly 600 pages, all in relation to the immunity case. Nearly all of them are from far-right organizations and legal activists requesting that the nation's highest court accept Trump's "unhinged" argument that presidents are unbound by the rule of law while they're in office.

One such group is "Condemned USA," which is led by convicted January 6 riot participant Treniss Evans. In his March 19 brief, Evans argued that if Trump can be prosecuted for alleged election interference in the events that led up to the 2021 insurrection, then President Joe Biden should be able to be sued for the death of Laken Riley — a murdered nursing student whose alleged killer is an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela.

"If a President doesn’t have immunity from prosecution for his actions, what prevents Georgia murder victim Laken Riley’s family from suing Joe Biden for allowing her illegal migrant murderer into the USA? Or what if hundreds of families all sued, [one by one]?" the brief read.

Pagliery observed that Evans' brief described him as someone who "has been investigating and reporting events of January 6th since January 6th, 2021, and that he "was present at the Capitol on that day." In fact, Evans was identified by someone the Beast described as a "Facebook tipster," then arrested by the FBI and eventually sentenced to three years' probation. During his own court proceedings, Evans' lawyer asked the judge for leniency, saying his client was "quite self-reproving, sincerely remorseful and duly contrite."

Another conservative group, The Christian Family Coalition Florida (which supports Gov. Ron DeSantis' trans-exclusionary policies), submitted its own brief. Pagliery reported that the group downplayed Trump's actions on January 6 as "core political speech." A lawyer for the group specifically argued that presidents should have the ability to lie without being held accountable.

"For the sake of the presidency and the nation, criminal liability cannot turn on a mere factual dispute over whether an ex-president’s communications in challenging an election were ‘knowingly false,’" the brief read.

One particular brief, however, disputed Trump's immunity claim. A brief submitted by three retired generals — including Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who was Trump's former acting national security adviser and Department of Veterans' Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie — threw cold water on the assertion that Trump could hypothetically order the murder of a political opponent with impunity.

"No—the president cannot order SEAL Team Six to assassinate his political rival and have the military carry out such an order," the generals wrote in their 18-page brief. "That a person is a political rival of the president is neither a justification nor an excuse for an unlawful killing. And deliberately carrying out an order to murder such a person would be acting upon a premeditated design to kill or an intent to kill. Therefore, any officer engaged in murder on the orders of a president would be subject to the death penalty or life in prison—and the officer would know it."

Click here to read Pagliery's full report (subscription required).

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