Trump's White House counsel says his lawyers conceded the 'only real argument they have'
The one arrow in Trump's legal quiver to salvage absolute immunity failed to hit.
Former President Donald Trump's former attorney Ty Cobb made it clear that his attorneys ran blinded into a burning building and can't get out now.
"I think his lawyers knew today would be a fateful day," Cobb said during an appearance on CNN's "Out Front" with Erin Burnett. "Their legal arguments and constitutional arguments were largely specious."
"I think that came out today; they basically abandoned I think as Judge [Florence] Pan carefully extracted the argument they had to make based on the law and real constitution, the only real argument they have -- they have conceded that under certain circumstances he could be prosecuted for even official acts, and they also conceded on the double jeopardy argument."
Trump's counsel Dean John Sauer tried to convince the panel of judges in the D.C. federal court on Tuesday that Trump as POTUS could make many orders and not be subject to criminal liability.
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“You’re saying a president could sell pardons, could sell military secrets, could order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival,” Pan said to Sauer.
Sauer then conceded that selling military secrets “strikes me as something that might not be held to be an official act.”
That concession, Pan concluded, undermines the Trump team’s hardline claims that the government’s separation of powers guarantees that there can't be any judiciary oversight nor a hold on the executive branch.
“Given that you’re conceding that presidents can be criminally prosecuted under certain circumstances, doesn’t that narrow the issues before us to ‘Can a president be prosecuted without first being impeached and convicted?’” Pan said.
She added: “Your separation of powers argument falls away, your policy arguments fall away if you concede that a president can be criminally prosecuted under some circumstances."
