Trump Lawyer Tells SCOTUS That Even A Military Coup Order Would Be Immune From Prosecution

WASHINGTON — An order from a president to the military to conduct a coup to remain in office “might well be an official act,” Donald Trump’s lawyer told the Supreme Court in oral arguments Thursday on the question of whether Trump’s attempted coup is immune from prosecution.

Trump’s claims that his actions leading up to the violent assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, are immune from prosecution received skeptical questioning from nearly all of the nine justices, but none more on-point than Elena Kagan’s question about 40 minutes in.

“How about if the president orders the military to stage a coup?” Kagan asked.

“That might well be an official act,” Trump attorney John Sauer answered.

Trump was not at the Supreme Court during the oral arguments Thursday but rather was in a different courtroom, in lower Manhattan, in the early phase of an unrelated criminal trial.

He has made it clear, though, that he is keenly aware of the import of the high court’s coming decision. On Monday, he posted an all-capital-letters screed demanding that all actions taken by a sitting president be given “complete & total” immunity, even those that “cross the line.” He ended with: “God bless the Supreme Court.”

Thursday morning, just minutes before he was due in the New York City courtroom, he posted three more times about the immunity case: “WITHOUT PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY, IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR A PRESIDENT TO PROPERLY FUNCTION, PUTTING THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN GREAT AND EVERLASTING DANGER!”

Trump has previously stated that he hoped the three justices he nominated ― Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett ― would be loyal to him and has subsequently complained that they and the others selected by Republican presidents