Donald Trump’s claim that he has absolute immunity for criminal acts taken in office as president is an insult to reason, an assault on common sense and a perversion of the fundamental maxim of American democracy: that no man is above the law.
More astonishing than the former president’s claim to immunity, however, is the fact that the Supreme Court took the case in the first place. It’s not just that there’s an obvious response — no, the president is not immune to criminal prosecution for illegal actions committed with the imprimatur of executive power, whether private or “official” (a distinction that does not exist in the Constitution) — but that the court has delayed, perhaps indefinitely, the former president’s reckoning with the criminal legal system of the United States.
In delaying the trial, the Supreme Court may well have denied the public its right to know whether a former president, now vying to be the next president, is guilty of trying to subvert the sacred process of presidential succession: the peaceful transfer of power from one faction to another that is the essence of representative democracy. It is a process so vital, and so precious, that its first occurrence — with the defeat of John Adams and the Federalists at the hands of Thomas Jefferson’s Republicans in the 1800 presidential election — was a second sort of American Revolution.
Whether motivated by sincere belief or partisanship or a myopic desire to weigh in on a case involving the former president, the Supreme Court has directly intervened in the 2024 presidential election in a way that deprives the electorate of critical information or gives it less time to grapple with what might happen in a federal courtroom. And if the trial occurs after an election in which Trump wins a second term and he is convicted, then the court will have teed the nation up for an acute constitutional crisis. A president, for the first time in the nation’s history, might try to pardon himself for his own criminal behavior.
From a purely academic standpoint, I think there is some merit to debating the limits of how and why Presidents can be held to account. The Conservative judges were quite concerned with the fate of former Presidents after their terms were over, even though most Presidents managed to not get indicted after leaving office. I think it’s quite clear that if this Court would have just let the lower court ruling stand, the idiots in Texas would have found some reason to prosecute President Biden over his “handling of the Southern border”, no matter how much bullshit that stance is. So in a way, the Court needed to take this up.
To me, it would have been sufficient to say “A President can’t be held liable for executing laws that were in place at the time he was in office, but can (and must!) be held liable for breaking any laws while acting outside his official capacity”.
Even though they needed to take it, they have been deliberately slow-rolling it. I predict they will rule much like I outlined above, but do it in a way where there is no way for the trials to go forward before the election.
I’m not saying a former president should have no immunity, but they should have practically no immunity.
I can envision no rule by which legitimate crimes could be prosecuted while preventing bad actors. The whole system relies on at least some number of people having good intentions.
Which is why we’re in the trouble that we are. Have you seen how the GOP is acting lately? Anyone who holds the country above their King is being purged.
I am alarmingly aware. But no rule can fix that.
Then the court can take a few moments to deal with the actual facts of that poorly considered case the same way they could take a few moments to deal with the actual facts of this legit one.