CNN anchor presses Trump lawyer on Kagan military coup questioning

CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins pressed an lawyer for former President Trump on a line of questioning by Supreme Courtroom Justice Elena Kagan within the former president’s presidential immunity case on the Supreme Courtroom Thursday.

“What are the circumstances the place ordering a army coup is an official act of the presidency?” Collins mentioned, referring to a back-and-forth between Kagan and Trump lawyer D. John Sauer during which she questioned him on presidential immunity within the case of a president ordering the army to stage a coup.

“If you’re speaking about official acts, you don’t look to intent, you don’t look to objective, you look to their underlying character,” Scharf responded. “So if that have been — if that form of state of affairs have been to unfold utilizing the official powers of the president, you can see there being a facet of officialness to that.”

The 2 went backwards and forwards, and Collins later remarked that Sharf was making “a reasonably brazen argument, that army coups might doubtlessly be official acts.”

Sharf retorted that the argument is just not meant to justify such issues, however to outline the scope of immunity presidents have been performing in workplace.

“Simply because a army coup or any of those form of parade of horribles might represent an official act doesn’t imply that they’re proper, doesn’t imply that they might be allowed below a constitutional system and doesn’t imply that we’re in any manner form or kind justifying that,” he mentioned. “What we’re speaking about right here, although, is the scope of immunity that presidents want to have the ability to depend on to discharge their core article to tasks as president.”

When requested about if a president ordering “the army to stage a coup” is an “official act” by Kagan on Thursday because the Supreme Courtroom held a listening to on Trump’s claims of immunity, Sauer responded that “it might properly be.”

On the identical day of the Supreme Courtroom listening to, the previous president was in court docket in New York for his hush cash case, which started final week. The case marks the primary legal trial of a former American president. He has been charged with 34 counts of falsifying enterprise data in relation to reimbursements to his lawyer on the time, Michael Cohen, who paid an grownup movie actor $130,000 previous to the 2016 election to maintain quiet about an alleged affair with Trump, which he denies.