October 23, 2019

Trump Could Get Away With Shooting Someone, His Lawyer Says

Yuri Gripas/Zuma

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As the impeachment investigation into President Donald Trump grips the nation, his lawyers continue to pursue the argument that he is above the law—and that his immunity from punishment would apply even if he were to shoot someone in the middle of New York’s Fifth Avenue.

At a campaign event in 2016, Trump said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” On Wednesday morning, William Consovoy, an attorney for Trump, made the case that such an action could not be criminally investigated while Trump was in office at a hearing in the ongoing court battle over the president’s tax returns. 

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. subpoenaed eight years of Trump’s tax returns for his investigation of whether Trump broke any New York State laws when he reimbursed his now-imprisoned personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, for hush fund payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Trump refused to release his taxes and sued the DA under the argument that a sitting president can’t be prosecuted. His lawyers are now appealing a federal judge’s ruling that called their argument “repugnant to the nation’s governmental structure and constitutional values.”

Listen to audio of the exchange between Consovoy and Judge Denny Chin below:

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. It's going to be a nail-biter, and we really need to see donations from this specific ask coming in strong if we're going to get there.

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