'Nothing Could Be Done': Trump Lawyer Argues President Could Shoot Someone on 5th Avenue and Avoid Consequences While in Office

Lawyers for President Donald Trump Wednesday argued in a Manhattan courtroom that were the president to shoot someone on 5th Avenue in New York City, he could not be prosecuted while in office because of presidential immunity. 

“Trump’s lawyers openly declared that Trump is above all laws, including murder,” tweeted Rep. Bill Pascrale (D-N.J.) in response to the news.

The exchange came during a hearing on the president’s tax returns, which Manhattan D.A. Cyrus Vance Jr. is attempting to obtain to see if Trump illegally paid to silence people with damaging information to his presidential campaign in 2016. Judge Denny Chin used Trump shooting someone in broad daylight on 5th Avenue—an invocation of a Trump brag on the campaign trail in 2016—as an example of the limits of presidential immunity from prosecution.

But Trump lawyer William S. Consovoy told the court that, in fact, the president would escape prosecution as long as he were in office. 

Chin: What’s your view on the Fifth Avenue example? Local authorities couldn’t investigate? They couldn’t do anything about it?

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Consovoy: Once the president is removed from office, any local authority, this is not a permanent immunity.

Chin: Well I’m talking about while in office. 

Consovoy: No.