With former President Donald Trump facing a variety of charges stemming from multiple indictments, MAGA pastor Shane Vaughn is growing increasingly desperate in his efforts to reassure his audience that Trump did nothing wrong and will be reelected to the White House in 2024.
Vaughn, a full-blown Trump cultist, did a livestream broadcast last week in which he boldly declared that “there will be no conviction of Donald John Trump before the elections,” insisting that Trump has complete immunity from prosecution because everything for which he has been charged was done in his official capacity as president.
Vaughn’s defense of Trump was based entirely on an opinion piece written by University of Baltimore law professor Kimberly Wehle in which she noted that the issue of presidential immunity is “a somewhat unsettled area of constitutional law” and examined some of the legal questions that are being raised by the various cases against Trump.
Vaughn, of course, did not present Wehle’s information in that manner, but rather simply used it to assert that the Constitution and Supreme Court precedents guarantee a president immunity over anything done within the boundaries of executive policy-making authority.
As such, Vaughn asserted that Trump cannot be prosecuted for orchestrating hush money payments to cover up an extra-marital affair he had with adult film actress Stormy Daniels in 2016.
“When they initiated the hush money payments over in New York for Stormy Daniels, was he operating in the outer boundaries of executive policy-making authority? I tell you he was,” Vaughn confidently declared. “Why? It was a distraction from his duties as president.”
Unfortunately for Vaughn, if he had bothered to actually read the indictment against Trump in the case, he would know that the payment to Daniels was made “12 days before the presidential general election.”
It is rather difficult to understand why Trump is entitled to presidential immunity for an illegal act that occurred before he became president.
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