Trump immunity hearing live updates: Former president to attend today’s proceedings

Special counsel attorney James Pearce delivered a fiery response to questions about the implications of Trump’s indictment, calling it an “extraordinarily frightening future” if a president were to be granted complete presidential immunity.

“I mean, what kind of world are we living in?” Pearce said. “If, as I understood my friend on the other side to say here, a president orders a SEAL team to assassinate a political rival and resigned, for example before an impeachment, it’s not a criminal act. I think that is extraordinarily frightening future.”

Judge Karen Henderson asked Pearce how the court could rule regarding presidential immunity in a way that “would stop the floodgates?”

“I want to push back a little bit against this idea of a floodgate.” Pearce responded, arguing that Smith’s indictment of Trump was not risking a continuation of “tit-for-tat” prosecutions that could cascade into the future.

“The various investigations in the Clinton era didn’t result in any charges. The fact that this investigation did doesn’t reflect that we are going to see a seachange of vindictive tit-for-tat prosecutions in the future. I think it reflects the fundamentally unprecedented nature of the criminal charges here,” he said.

“Never before has there been allegations that a sitting president has, with private individuals and using the levers of power, sought to fundamentally subvert the democratic republic and the electoral system. And frankly, it’s that kind of fact pattern arises again, I think it would be awfully scary if there weren’t some sort of mechanism by which to reach that,” he argued.