Peter Keisler on NPR
Advisory Council Member Peter Keisler spoke to NPR’s Nina Totenberg about Trump v. United States and the former president’s claim of sweeping immunity for presidential acts:
Without presidential immunity, [Trump lawyer William] Scharf contends, “You end up in a scenario where presidents will be paralyzed by the fear of post-election criminal prosecutions, and the ability of the president to discharge his duties in a vigorous and effective way will be forever crippled.”
Not so, counters Peter Keisler, a who served as a top Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration: “You don’t protect the presidency by immunizing somebody who tries to steal it.”
Keisler has joined with several dozen high-ranking former GOP officeholders in filing a Supreme Court brief opposed to Trump’s position.
“The text of the Constitution has no provision granting this immunity. No court decision has ever recognized this immunity. The historical understanding in our country has always been exactly the opposite,” Keisler says. “Fundamentally, Trump’s argument’s just at war with the basic precept of our system that says that no one’s above the law.”