Government

House Republicans Unveil New Bill To Put Former Presidents Above The Law

Above state law, anyway.

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(Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

Last week, a jury of twelve New Yorkers convicted Donald Trump of 34 counts of creating a false business record. And Republicans are PISSED.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is screeching nonsense about defunding the entire state of New York, but Rep. Russel Fry, a freshman Republican out of South Carolina, eschews such displays of blunt force. Perhaps out of deference to his endangered Empire State Republican colleagues, Fry proposes to attack the problem with a scalpel — albeit a crazy one that might cause his professors at the Charleston School of Law to spontaneously combust.

Fry sponsored the “No More Political Prosecutions Act of 2023” to ensure that no such travesty as “prosecuting crimes where they were committed” can ever happen again. It would amend 28 U.S. Code § 1442, the federal removal statute, to allow former presidents and vice presidents to have all civil and criminal cases against them tried in federal court. The current law allows for federal removal of state cases involving “any officer of the courts of the United States, for or relating to any act under color of office or in the performance of his duties.”

Trump’s Georgia codefendants already tried and failed to get their criminal RICO cases in Fulton County moved to federal court. And Trump himself moved unsuccessfully in 2023 to get the New York prosecution removed to federal court, and got tossed because paying his private lawyer for anything, much less a hush money payoff to protect his electoral prospects, is not part of the president’s official duties.

“Reimbursing Cohen for advancing hush money to Stephanie Clifford cannot be considered the performance of a constitutional duty,” Judge Hellerstein wrote. Falsifying business records to hide such reimbursement, and to transform the reimbursement into a business expense for Trump and income to Cohen, likewise does not relate to a presidential duty.”

Fry and his nine co-sponsors, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, hope to remove the pesky requirement that the charged conduct have anything to do with official duties.

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“Politically motivated prosecutors should not be able to wield unwarranted power and target our nation’s top leaders for their own personal gain,” Fry told his fellow MAGA travelers at Breitbart. “This legislation will prevent the political prosecutions of Presidents and Vice Presidents and thwart corrupt prosecutors’ agendas.”

Will it though?

As Axios reports, GOP politicians from swing states are not exactly clamoring for this action. And, even if this bill could pass, it might run into one or two teensy problems.

Or, as Georgetown Law Professor Steve Vladeck put it …

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You mean to say that Congress inventing federal jurisdiction for purely state crimes and/or civil suits, with no federal nexus and no diversity, based solely on the identity of one of the parties, might present an issue under Article III? Who knew!

Not Mike Johnson, who is also a lawyer. But Mike Johnson thinks that the Supreme Court is going to hop right on Trump’s case and overturn it toot sweet. So, maybe don’t go by that guy either.

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