Trump friendly justice Amy Coney Barrett may have shut the door on the silly argument that he shouldn't face any criminal charges unless he had first been impeached and then found guilty.
“You’ve argued that the impeachment clause suggests or requires impeachment to be a gateway to criminal prosecution, right?” Barrett asked.
“Yes,” Trump’s attorney, John Sauer, said of the impeachment clause.
“There are many other people who are subject to impeachment, including the nine sitting on this bench,” Barrett said, “and I don’t think anyone has ever suggested that impeachment would have to be the gateway to criminal prosecution for any of the many other officers subject to impeachment."
“So why is the president different when the impeachment clause doesn’t say so?” Barrett asked.
Sauer then admitted the lack of case law but he cited an opinion from former Solicitor General Robert Bork, who – Sauer said – found the sequence of impeachment in the Senate was required before criminal prosecution specifically (and only) for a president.