Stephen Miller, a former adviser to Donald Trump, has hit out at U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s decision that presidents can be charged when they are no longer in office.
Chutkan, who is set to oversee the March 2024 federal election interference case brought by the Department of Justice (DOJ), said on Friday that Trump, who is running to secure the Republican presidential nomination, was not immune from prosecution.
The former president has denied any wrongdoing and has claimed the charges brought against in four indictments him are part of a political witch hunt.
“Former presidents enjoy no special conditions on their federal criminal liability,” Chutkan said. “Defendant may be subject to federal investigation, indictment, prosecution, conviction, and punishment for any criminal acts undertaken while in office.”
Miller slammed Chutkan’s ruling in several posts uploaded to X, formerly known as Twitter, on December 2.
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“Many likely don’t appreciate just how radical and dangerous it is to revoke the doctrine of presidential immunity,” Miller said.
“In effect, this gives any single far-left judge, jury, or prosecutor a veto over the actions of the democratically elected president.
“The fact that such a persecution may initiate after a president has left office is irrelevant: future presidents will now exercise their office within the narrow confines of this anti-constitutional, anti-democratic framework.
“A president is the embodiment of the state and the voter. So when he becomes liable for his exercise of speech as president it is, in fact, the whole American people who have been robbed of their sovereign authority—authority transferred yet again to the unelected, unreformed, and unaccountable.
“Conservatives not speaking out against these travesties are clearly uninterested in conserving this republic.”
Many likely don’t appreciate just how radical and dangerous it is to revoke the doctrine of presidential immunity. In effect, this gives any single far-left judge, jury or prosecutor a veto over the actions of the democratically-elected president.
It means a Letitia James or a…
— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) December 2, 2023
In a separate post, Miller added: “If presidential immunity only applies to acts Democrat partisans unanimously agree are legitimate presidential activities, then by definition there is no immunity for Republican officeholders—they serve at the pleasure of the leftmost prosecutor in the country at any given time.
“Put another way: If just one extreme partisan can dissolve the immunity then the immunity is already dissolved.
“It is the legal and intellectual equivalent of when Democrats say they believe in the First Amendment except for misinformation, disinformation, and ‘hate speech.’
“Your rights extend only to the edge of the left’s permission. So in a perfect closed loop of illogic, Democrats are free to break election law but Republicans will go to jail for exposing it or seeking appropriate legal redress.”
Newsweek has contacted America First Legal, which lists Miller as its president, via its website and Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the House Democratic caucus, via his website for comment.
Trump’s office previously decried Chutkan’s decision in a statement sent to Newsweek.
“Radical Democrats, under the direction of Crooked Joe Biden, continue to try and destroy bedrock constitutional principles and set dangerous precedents that would cripple future presidential administrations and our country as a whole, in their desperate effort to interfere in the 2024 presidential election,” said Trump spokesman Steven Cheung.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.