Donald Trump likes to tell anyone who will listen that he’s absolutely convinced he will win his 2024 rematch against President Joe Biden. And, according to people who’ve spoken to the ex-president about this, Trump also seems convinced that if he wins another four years in the White House, state prosecutors will still be waiting for him on the other side of his term — ready to put him on trial, or even in prison, just as they are now.
To avoid such risks, the former and perhaps future president of the United States wants Congress to create a very specific insurance policy that would help keep him out of prison forever, two sources familiar with the matter tell Rolling Stone. Trump vaguely alluded to this idea last week outside his New York criminal hush money trial, when he said he has urged Republican lawmakers to pass “laws to stop things like this.”
In recent months, the sources say, Trump has spoken to several GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill, attorneys, and other associates about the possibility of Republicans passing legislation in a second Trump term that would shield former presidents (i.e. Trump) from non-federal prosecutions. In recent conversations with closely-aligned lawmakers, Trump has pressured them to do so, describing it as imperative that he signs such a bill into law, if he again ascends to the Oval Office.
This, of course, would require that Republicans keep the House, take back the Senate, and have enough votes and agreement on the wisdom of these ideas to get it done.
“Even after a second term, he doesn’t think any of this is going to end,” says one of the sources. “He doesn’t think Democrats are going to quit coming after him.”
If Trump retakes the presidency this November, a new MAGAfied attorney general can shut down Special Counsel Jack Smith’s federal criminal cases against Trump, therefore killing the two planned federal trials, neither of which is expected to happen during this election year. But in a scenario where Trump defeats Biden in November, he would in theory still have criminal charges and a trial waiting for him in Georgia, where he would not be able to pardon himself or have his Justice Department quash the case.
The twice-impeached, repeatedly-indicted ex-president and presumptive 2024 GOP nominee would like to resolve that problem, for obvious self-interested reasons.
Different ideas have been kicked around, including in private discussions with Trump, about how to go about this. But more recently, Trump appears fixated on the idea of passing a law to give former American presidents the option of moving state or local prosecutions into a federal court instead, the two sources add.
The former president himself has hinted at a legislative push to limit his exposure to such criminal charges. In an improvised press conference outside the Manhattan courthouse on Tuesday, Trump said he’s been telling the Republican lawmakers who want to attend his trial and show solidarity to focus on legislation instead.
“We have a lot of ’em. They want to come. I say, ‘Just stay back and pass lots of laws to stop things like this,’” Trump told reporters.
Some Trump supporters in the House have already backed legislation that would help fulfill the former president’s wishes to place himself above the law — and did so well before the Manhattan criminal trial was underway.
Last year, Rep. Russell Fry (R-S.C.) introduced the “No More Political Prosecutions Act of 2023.” The bill, just a few lines long, would allow current and former presidents and vice presidents to remove any state or civil cases against them to federal court for any acts committed in the course of their official duties.
Given that Justice Department policy forbids the prosecution of a sitting president, the legislation would effectively freeze any pending state criminal or civil cases should Trump win a second term. Prosecutors in a Trump-appointed Justice Department could also effectively shut down the cases against him.
Among the bill’s cosponsors is House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who recently told Politico, “I think it’s common sense that you can’t have the president sitting in the Oval Office worried about whether some lawyer or some local DA somewhere is going to go after him.”
The legislation’s sponsor replied on X: “I agree. It’s time for a vote on H.R. 2553, the No More Political Prosecutions Act.”
Trump’s push for new legislation is just his latest idea for shielding himself from criminal accountability. As Rolling Stone previously reported, Trump and his allies also plan to have the Justice Department‘s Office of Legal Counsel issue a memo advising that the DOJ should prohibit the prosecution of presidents even after they leave office.
Such a memo would codify Trump’s arguments in federal court, and now at the Supreme Court, that presidents have expansive presidential immunity, even after they leave office, and that impeachment is the only avenue available for holding a president accountable for crimes committed while in office.
His attorneys tried to use the pending Supreme Court case weighing those arguments as an excuse to delay the New York City hush money case, on the grounds that some of the evidence included in the trial dated to his time in office.
Judge Juan Merchan dismissed the attempt.
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