CNN legal analyst questions JD Vance’s law education over ‘immunity’ claims

A CNN legal analyst questioned Vice President JD Vance’s education after his claim that federal immigration agents enjoy “absolute immunity.”

The vice president justified the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Wednesday in Minneapolis by smearing the woman as a left-wing radical intent on impeding and harming federal agents, who he argued were “protected by absolute immunity.”

“The precedent here is very simple,” Vance told reporters Thursday at the White House. “You have a federal law enforcement official engaging in federal law enforcement action. That’s a federal issue. That guy is protected by absolute immunity. He was doing his job.”

CNN’s Elliot Williams, a former federal prosecutor, dismissed the the Yale Law School graduate’s argument as nonsense.

“That is not correct, and the vice president of the United States went to literally the most prestigious law school on the planet and knows that that’s not accurate,” Williams said. “Now, certainly law enforcement officers enjoy tremendous and very broad immunity for the actions that they carry out on the job, and they should, because they have to make very stressful on-the-spot decisions without the benefit of hindsight that we all have watching things on TikTok.”

“That said, when someone steps far outside the bounds of either state or local law or, frankly, even their own guidelines as law enforcement officials, absolutely, they can be held accountable both by the agency they work for or state, local or federal authorities,” Williams added. “So that’s just simply not an accurate statement from the vice president.”