Justice Roberts Presses Attorney On Differentiating President's 'Private Acts' From 'Official Acts'

8 months ago

On Thursday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Trump v. United States.

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Transcript

00:00Thank you, Counsel, and what is the consequence in terms of going forward with your acknowledgement

00:07that those are private acts as opposed to official acts?

00:10If you look at the indictment here, there's a bunch of acts that we think are just clearly

00:16official.

00:17There may be allegations that mostly relate to what the government has described here

00:20as private aim or private end, and the court should remand or address itself, but remand

00:26for a Brewster-like determination, which is what's official and what's private.

00:30The official stuff has to be expunged completely from the indictment before the case can go

00:33forward, and there has to be a determination at least on remand of what's official, a two-stage

00:38determination of what's official and what's private.

00:40Well, if you expunge the official part from the indictment, how do you, I mean, that's

00:44like a one-legged stool, right?

00:47I mean, giving somebody money isn't bribery unless you get something in exchange, and

00:52if what you get in exchange is to become the ambassador to a particular country, that

00:57is official, the appointment.

00:59It's within the president's prerogatives.

01:01The unofficial part is I'm going to get a million dollars for it.

01:04So if you say you have to expunge the official part, how does that go forward?

01:10This particular indictment, when we say virtually all the overt conduct is official, we don't

01:13believe it would be able to go forward.

01:15I mean, there could be a case where it could, but if you look at even the government's brief

01:19in this case divides up the indictment into things that other than the electors' allegations

01:26don't really are, they haven't disputed that they are official acts, but what they do is

01:31say, well, we tie it all together by characterizing it as done, and these are the allegations

01:36that the court just referred to, by an improper private aim or private end.

01:40Again, that's their words, and that just runs loggerheads, you know, dead set against this

01:45court's case list, and you don't look at when immunity terminations the improper motivation

01:51or purpose.

01:52Thank you.

Justice Roberts Presses Attorney On Differentiating President's 'Private Acts' From 'Official Acts'

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