Donald Trump is still trying to fight off the Emoluments Clause lawsuit against him, and his new legal defense is that the President is immune from lawsuits of this type. Not only is that 100% not true, but it shows how scared he is that people are discovering the truth about his entire presidency. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.
Transcript:
It’s important to remember that it’s not just porn stars, or people that accuse the president of sexual assault, or the Russian investigation that Donald Trump is currently fighting off in court. Not that long ago a federal judge ruled that an emoluments clause violation lawsuit against the president could in fact move forward. And Donald Trump decided that his main focus should be fighting that one particular lawsuit, rather than the train wrecks happening with all of his other legal problems.
So this week, Donald Trump comes out and says that he has total and complete immunity from an emoluments clause’s lawsuit, and therefore the judge should throw the suit out. Or at least that’s the argument that Donald Trump’s legal team is making.
Here’s why that is one of the dumbest arguments you could possibly make for this particular lawsuit. First and foremost, the emoluments clause presents any sitting president or high ranking official from accepting any gifts, financial or otherwise, from foreign entities. And what they’re alleging in this lawsuit is that by not divesting in his companies, by still owning them and receiving a profit from them, any time you have a foreign dignitary that comes to DC and stays in Donald Trump’s hotel, that’s giving money to the president, especially because most of these people end up meeting with the president, or other members of the administration.
The judge said yep, that’s good enough to at least bring the case forward. But Trump’s saying no, the emoluments clause lawsuit, that can’t apply to him because he’s the president, and he has immunity. And to be honest, I think Donald Trump honest to God believes that. I think that he believes, as president of the United States, he is above the law. And what’s even worse is you apparently have too many people on the right who believe that also. They believe that the president cannot be held accountable when they break the law, and that’s simply not true.
That’s why we have laws like the emoluments clause in the United States constitution. But Donald Trump just wants to crap all over it. He doesn’t care about the constitution, he doesn’t care about the rule of law. All he cares about is how much money he can build out of the United States, out of foreign dignatories, out of the government itself, while he is president of the United States.
That is why he ran for president. It’s not because he wants to change things in this country, it’s because he wants to make money from it. And that is exactly what this lawsuit is trying to put an end to.
