'Incredible showdown' as ex-military leaders warn SCOTUS Trump 'immunity' threatens national security

On Thursday, April 25, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in former President Donald Trump's "absolute immunity" filing.

Trump and his legal team claim that because he was still president in late 2020 and early 2021, he enjoys "absolute immunity" from a criminal prosecution like special counsel Jack Smith's election interference case — an argument that Smith urged the High Court to reject in a 66-page filing sent on Monday, April 8.

Smith is hardly the only prominent figure who considers Trump's "presidential immunity" fundamentally flawed.

READ MORE: 'The most critical piece': Jack Smith urges SCOTUS to reject Trump’s immunity plea

A group of retired military leaders are also asking the justices to reject that argument, warning, in a letter, that giving a U.S. president immunity from prosecution would promote "the spread of authoritarianism" and threaten "the national security of the United States and democracies around the world."

MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace discussed their warning with legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann and former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) during an April 8 broadcast of her show "Deadline: White House."

Weissmann told Wallace (a Never Trump conservative who served as White House communications director under Republican President George W. Bush) and McCaskill, "What they're saying is: You're going to have a system where you're counting on the military to say no to the president when he gives illegal orders such as killing his political adversaries. That is the position that Donald Trump is advocating, and you have the military saying this. And the big picture is: Donald Trump is telling you now who he is — not who he will when he is president."

Weissmann continued, "He is saying that is his position as to how the country should be run, where he can actually have the military carry out these illegal orders of killing adversaries — and the military would have to follow. And this is the military saying: We do not want to be in that position because he may be immune, but we have a problem following that. We are not going to be carrying out those orders, and the Supreme Court should not be making that the position of a constitutional democracy. This is an incredible showdown in the Supreme Court as to who we are."

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Watch the full video below or at this link.

Top Former Military Personnel urge Supreme Court to reject Trump Immunity Questionwww.youtube.com