Benjamin Wittes and Alan Rozenshtein on Thompson v. Trump, Presidential Immunity and the First Amendment
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2022
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Monday, January 10, a federal district court in DC heard oral argument in Thompson v. Trump. The case considers civil claims against Donald Trump and others for their roles in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. It raises a number of complicated legal issues, including whether Trump is immune from these kinds of claims, whether it's possible to establish a conspiracy among the perpetrators of the attack and how the First Amendment factors into all of this.
Natalie Orpett sat down with Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes and Lawfare senior editor Alan Rozenshtein to discuss the state of the law, the main challenges for each side and what we can garner from Monday’s five-hour proceedings.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:32.6 | No, I think the reason Clinton versus Jones is unanimous opinion against presidential |
| 0:37.8 | immunity in that case is not actually because of the nature of the conduct as much as it |
| 0:43.5 | is the temporal fact that this happened before Clinton was president and therefore there |
| 0:48.7 | was no question of, you know, Clinton didn't have to necessarily, you know, change his |
| 0:54.2 | presidential behavior to deal with this pre-existing conduct. |
| 1:00.3 | So I think the issue for Judge Mehta and why my personal intuition, though we'll obviously |
| 1:06.4 | see how this goes and it can go either way, is that presidential immunity probably does |
| 1:10.4 | apply here under what I think is the best reading of Nixon versus Fitzgerald is that |
| 1:15.7 | speaking to the public about elections and electoral fraud is something that presidents can |
| 1:24.8 | and conceivably do as part of their official acts. |
| 1:27.3 | Now the problem of course is that the president Trump was lying, but that's a different |
| 1:31.2 | question whether president should get immunity. |
| 1:35.4 | I'm Natalie Orpah and this is the LawFair podcast January 12th, 2022. |
| 1:42.2 | On Monday January 10th, a federal district court in DC heard oral argument in Thompson v. |
| 1:47.9 | Trump. |
| 1:49.3 | The case considers civil claims against Donald Trump and others for their roles in the |
| 1:53.6 | January 6th Capitol insurrection. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Lawfare Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Lawfare Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.