Former President Donald Trump has argued he should be immune from prosecution in the federal election conspiracy case brought by special counsel Jack Smith, claiming that he cannot be charged for actions carried out in his official capacity. His attorney even controversially argued to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that he couldn't be charged for assassinating an opponent unless he was impeached first.
But that was not his old attitude, noted the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) on Tuesday. In fact, they said, he used to regularly call for other presidents to be jailed for acts committed in office.
"In late 2018, Trump retweeted an image, later deleted, that showed former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama behind bars, with the caption that suggested they should be tried for treason," said the report. "Trump was referring to the unfounded claims that his 2016 campaign was spied on by the Obama administration as part of a larger 'deep state' initiative to undermine his presidential bid. It bears emphasizing that there is no evidence for what Trump was claiming, and even if it were true, it would not rise to the level of treason, which is a capital crime."
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This was not a one-off incident either, said the CREW report — Trump kept demanding Obama be arrested for supposedly interfering with his campaign.
"By May 2019, Trump was specifically calling for prison sentences, 'My Campaign for President was conclusively spied on. Nothing like this has ever happened in American Politics. A really bad situation. TREASON means long jail sentences, and this was TREASON!'" said the report. "In 2020, the charge of treason is one that he would specifically ascribe to Obama and Biden, tweeting in July, 'So we catch Obama & Biden, not to even mention the rest of their crew, SPYING on my campaign, AND NOTHING HAPPENS? I hope not! If it were the other way around, 50 years for treason. NEVER FORGET!!!!'"
Notably, this is not the only way Trump has reversed his argument on this issue. During the 2020 election, when he was trying to get state results overturned, he made clear to courts he was acting as a candidate, not a president, which would further contradict the idea that immunity could apply to him.
