The old adage "A man who acts as his own attorney has a fool for a client" got reversed today: "A man who has a fool for a client and that fool won't listen to him? Is destined to look like a fool as well."
D. John Sauer is a former Missouri solicitor general and clerk for Antonin Scalia. Yeah.
And today he had to go before a three-judge appeals court panel and argue in favor of a hypothetical "president" who ordered S.E.A.L. Team 6 to assassinate a political rival.
Later in the hearing, the lawyer for sanity, James Pearce, a career lawyer in the Justice Department, argued that agreeing with Trump's side would lead to a "frightening future":
"Frankly, as I think Judge Pan’s hypothetical described, what kind of world are we living in if, as I understood my friend on the other side to say here, a president orders his SEAL team to assassinate a political rival and resigns for example, before an impeachment? Not a criminal act. President sells a pardon, resigns or is not impeached? Not a crime," Pearce said.
"I think that is an extraordinarily frightening future and that is the kind of if we’re talking about a balancing and a weighing of the interests I think that should weigh extraordinarily heavily in the court's consideration."
Andrew Weissman puts it plainly:
