Swamp Notes: The Supreme Court weighs presidential power
FT News Briefing
Forhecz Topher
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 27 April 2024
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The US Supreme Court set out to answer a big constitutional question on Thursday: can a president be charged for potential crimes committed while in office? The FT’s Washington bureau chief, James Politi, and US legal and enforcement correspondent, Stefania Palma, join this week’s Swamp Notes to explain why the answer could determine the outcome of Donald Trump’s federal trials and the future of the American presidency.
Mentioned in this podcast:
US Supreme Court debates limits of presidential immunity in Donald Trump appeal
Donald Trump prepares his final pitch on presidential immunity
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Swamp Notes is produced by Ethan Plotkin, Sonja Hutson, Lauren Fedor and Marc Filippino. Topher Forhecz is the FT’s executive producer. The FT’s global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Special thanks to Pierre Nicholson.
CREDIT: CNN
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The F.T. News briefing is supported by Equinor. The UK's energy partner. |
| 0:06.3 | Learn more at equinor.co. UK. |
| 0:09.8 | The US Supreme Court heard a pretty big case this week. |
| 0:16.6 | We will hear argument to Sportigan case 23 939 Trump versus United States. |
| 0:22.3 | And its ruling could go a long way to determining the fate of |
| 0:26.1 | the former president and the F.T. News briefing where we talk about all of the things happening in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. I'm Sonia Hudson and this week we're asking |
| 0:46.1 | is the president immune from criminal prosecution? Here with me to discuss is James |
| 0:51.8 | Polidi the F.T. |
| 0:53.0 | Washington Bureau Chief, hey James. |
| 0:55.0 | Hey, nice to be here. |
| 0:56.0 | And we've also got Stefania Palma, the F.T. |
| 0:58.0 | US Legal and Enforcement Correspondent. |
| 1:01.0 | Hi, Stefania. |
| 1:02.0 | Hi, Sonia. So, Stefania, I want to start off by asking you what is this case all |
| 1:06.5 | about and what are the arguments that Donald Trump's lawyers are making? |
| 1:10.5 | So the Supreme Court arguments stem from a federal indictment that essentially accuses Trump of seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential elections. |
| 1:20.0 | He was accused of a conspiracy to defraud the US to obstruct an official proceeding etc. |
| 1:27.0 | Now in trying to defend himself from that case his lawyers have been arguing that actually he should be absolutely immune from |
| 1:35.4 | criminal prosecution. Their theory goes that when it comes to actions taken in an |
| 1:40.4 | official capacity, a former president cannot be indicted unless he or she has already |
| 1:48.0 | been convicted via the impeachment process for similar crimes. One of the theories behind granting presidential immunity is that basically if a president feels threatened by the idea of being potentially criminally prosecuted in the future for actions |
| 2:04.8 | that they're taking well in office, which obviously is an extremely difficult job, very high |
... |
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