Former U.S. Attorney Jay Town argues the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity will really hamper Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution against former President Donald Trump.
Smith is charging Trump with four felony counts for what he believes was the former President’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results.
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that presidents have immunity from prosecution for conducting any official acts while in office.
Town reacted to the ruling Monday on Talk Radio 102.3’s “Yaffee Live!”
“This is not a split the baby opinion,” Town said. “I had been thinking all along that, you know, not knowing what the justices might do, that they would sort of do some hand wringing. And they would say, ‘Yes, there’s immunity, but you trial court have to tell us what it is or what acts are [that] the President enjoys immunity from prosecution.’ No. That’s not what they did here. They go through a laundry list of what’s in the actual indictment of things that are firmly, not even in the outer perimeter, but within the the firm constitutional grasp of presidential immunity.”
The former U.S. Attorney explained why this specifically helps Trump in the January 6th case.
“[I]f you want to prosecute the president, he’s presumed immune and you’re going to have to defeat that immunity by rebutting that presumption, and you can’t consider the motives that the President did X. It just has to be somewhere within the boundaries, there’s reason number 482 could be a legitimate federal executive function. And that’s enough for that President to gain immunity for that act or for that to be determined to be an official act of which all official acts are now immune from prosecution.”
“This completely just eviscerates Jack Smith’s prosecution,” he added. “And if you’ve gotten to Justice Thomas’s concurrence, it’s basically a middle finger emoji to Jack Smith.”
RELATED: U.S. Supreme Court rules in favor of Trump immunity, backed by briefs from Alabama AG Steve Marshall
Town also argued that some of the media reaction to the ruling has been overblown, with even some suggesting that a President could now kill his political enemies without being prosecuted.
“I’ve thought about it even,” he said. “How can you articulate a viable article to function of the President to go kill somebody in the middle of the street, no matter who does the killing? Right. It’s hard for me to think about what that official function would be. Unless that guy himself is putting up an insurrection or trying to fashion a coup or something like that. Well, hey, I’m on SEAL Team Six side and that one, right. So but short of that, it’s an absurd, ridiculous illustration that the Court of Appeals in DC tried to put on Trump’s defense team.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” weekdays 9-11 a.m. on WVNN. You can follow him on X @Yaffee
