Decisive turn of events, Judge Florence Pan reportedly emerged victorious, delivering a swift blow to Trump’s legal team with just a few sentences. George Conway, a conservative attorney associated with the anti-Trump faction, the Lincoln Project, expressed his astonishment while observing the proceedings in the D.C. courtroom on Tuesday during Trump’s immunity appeal.
During an interview on CNN’s “The Source” with Kaitlan Collins, Conway detailed the masterful way in which the federal circuit court judge dismantled the former president’s legal team’s bid for absolute immunity regarding his actions leading up to and on January 6, 2021. On that day, Trump is accused of conspiring to overturn the presidential election outcome and inciting chaos among his supporters who stormed the Capitol Building.
Describing Judge Pan’s performance as an “intellectual tour de force,” Conway highlighted how she exposed the extreme nature of the defense’s position, asserting that a president might be immune from prosecution even for actions like assassinating political rivals. Conway also pointed out the inconsistency in Trump’s team’s arguments, noting that their attempt to invoke the impeachment judgment clause contradicted their main stance of absolute presidential immunity.
Trump’s counsel, Dean John Sauer, endeavored to persuade the panel of judges in the D.C. federal court on Tuesday that, as President of the United States, Trump could issue orders without being subject to criminal liability.
However, Judge Pan challenged this assertion by questioning the narrowing of issues before the court. “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?'” she queried. Pan emphasized that if the concession was made that a president could be criminally prosecuted under specific circumstances, arguments related to separation of powers and policy considerations would lose their relevance.
Conway characterized the effort by Sauer and his team as an attempt to turn a bad argument into an even worse one. He remarked, “And what happened was the Trump attorney, Sauer, set a trap for himself that Judge Pan just completely, completely closed off.”
