MSNBC Host: Nixon Pardon Proves Presidents Don't Have Criminal Immunity
Trump's claim of immunity in election case to face appeals court next week
President Gerald Ford, on Sunday September 8, 1974 — in the wake of the Watergate scandal and its attempted cover-up — granted a full and unconditional pardon to his disgraced predecessor, Richard Nixon.
The pardon covered any crimes that Nixon might have committed against the United States as president.
That Ford would offer — and Nixon accept — such a pardon proves that US presidents can be prosecuted for crimes committed in office, according to attorney and MSNBC host Ari Melber.
And it neutralizes Donald Trump’s contention — made nearly a half-century later — that he is immune from prosecution for any actions taken as president, Melber said on his program Wednesday evening.
A federal appeals court next week is scheduled to hold arguments on the Trump's claims of immunity in special counsel Jack Smith's case against him for his role in attempting to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 election.
Those claims are likely to be eventually considered by the US Supreme Court.
“Indeed, if you’re not into law, but you have a basic memory of American history — something we actually talked about at the top of the program — you may know former presidents are not automatically immune from potential prosecution,” Melber said. “That’s never been any kind of rule and that’s why, as many know, President Ford pardoned former President Nixon, precisely because otherwise, the former president — at that time Nixon — could have been charged.”
Melber also played a much more contemporary clip, this time featuring Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, of remarks that he made in the aftermath of Trump's 2021 impeachment for his role in the January 6 insurrection and attack on the US Capitol Building.
“Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office, as an ordinary citizen. We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being accountable by either one,” McConnell said in that clip.
“And to be clear, I’m showing you that not just to say, ‘Oh, look, that’s what they said,’ but that was so rudimentary, so obvious, so plain that McConnell wasn’t making waves by saying it. It was just the state of play,” Melber said if that clip. “If you want to check the Justice Department, long before Jack Smith or anyone else came along, it has held the view, in writing, that former presidents can be prosecuted and that specifically the Constitution permits a former president to be criminally prosecuted for the same offenses for which he was impeached and then acquitted by the Senate while in office, as a 2000 memo explains.”
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