Wyoming Petitions Supreme Court For Presidential Immunity Test

The Supreme Court will soon decide to what extent a former president is immune from criminal prosecution for conduct involved in official acts during the former president’s tenure in office.

Wyoming's Attorney General joined three state Attorneys General in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to establish a legal test for the limits of presidential immunity.

The three states include Attorney General Dave Yost, Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor, and Wyoming Attorney General Bridget Hill

The request involved President Donald Trump’s immunity appeal on federal criminal charges.

They argue that some standards are necessary when dealing with the possibility of future criminal and civil prosecutions.

The video below explains how immunity works.

They argue that constitutional guardrails are needed to guide future legal proceedings.

“A line of normal behavior has been crossed – the special counsel actually boasts in his own brief that a president has never before been criminally prosecuted,” Argued Yost in a press release.

“In the same way that impeachment has apparently been normalized, it seems likely that we will see future cases in which a prosecutor charges a chief magistrate.”

 

The AGs argue that a two-factor legal test is needed so that the courts would have guidelines to follow in cases examining questions of presidential immunity:

• How closely an alleged criminal action is linked to the president’s core powers under Article II of The Constitution. The test should examine the relationship between the action and the president’s official responsibilities; the closer an action relates to a core presidential power, the stronger the case for immunity.

• Whether the urgency of the situation warranted the president’s actions. The brief argues that times of heightened urgency, such as war, call for a greater degree of immunity for the president.

They argue that the nation needs clear guidance from the highest court.