Trump's Presidential Immunity: Supreme Court Holds Historic Hearing
Are they truly independent judges or political hacks doing one party's bidding?
I share former Rep. Liz Cheney's frustration, even outrage, as she wrote in a NYTimes op-ed, that it appears the Supreme Court will not rule swiftly enough on Donald Trump's immunity claim that he can stand trial before the 2024 election on charges related to January 6, 2021.
“It cannot be that a president of the United States can attempt to steal an election and seize power but our justice system is incapable of bringing him to trial before the next election four years later,” she wrote. (Hat tip, HCR.)
These two Lincoln Project videos dramatize the principles before the high court.
Military Coup: "Trump's lawyer just argued a Trump military coup could well be an official act that is immune from later prosecution in front of the Supreme Court. What do you think?"
Assassination: "The fact that we're debating before the Supreme Court whether a president can be a dictator speaks to how dangerous and dark a path Donald Trump has led America down. In November we must decide if we continue down it."
Yet listening to part of the oral arguments, I could not help but validate concerns that declaring a president has no immunity from prosecution whatsoever could open up a hornet's nest. There needs to be a clear delineation between a president acting officially in the public interest and privately for his own selfish interests. As David Rivkin and Elizabeth Foley argued in The Wall Street Journal:
"Imagine how other presidents might have fared if they had to worry about prosecution for official acts:
• Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus without congressional authorization. In Ex Parte Merryman (1861), Chief Justice Roger Taney, acting as a circuit judge, held that the power to suspend habeas lies solely with Congress. Lincoln ignored Taney’s ruling and continued his suspension of habeas until the end of the Civil War. No one suggested that Lincoln be prosecuted for false imprisonment, false arrest, or kidnapping.
• Harry S. Truman seized domestic steel plants during the Korean War, violating statutes that authorized the president to seize private property only in narrow circumstances. The Supreme Court declared his actions unconstitutional in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952). But no federal prosecutors suggested they could prosecute him for “conspiracy against rights,” or “conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States,” the charges Mr. Smith has brought against Mr. Trump.
• Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden all unilaterally ordered military actions as commander in chief. Critics accused them of usurping Congress’s power to declare war, but nobody seriously suggested that they be prosecuted for murder, torture, war crimes or misappropriation of government resources.
It seems there's an obvious path for the Supreme Court. They can rule that Trump's behavior was private, self-centered, and not in the national interest and therefore he is not immune from prosecution.
More likely, this conservative court will remand the case back to the lower court to decide if Trump's actions were in the public interest or private and self-centered. This would lead to a serious delay in the case, and make it impossible for a court to rule on Trump's January 6, 2021 actions before the November election.
We know that Clarence Thomas, who refused to recuse himself though his wife participated in Trump's coup attempt, is simply a partisan hack who will advocate for Trump on the high court. It's not yet clear about the three Trump appointees to the court, whether they are truly independent or simply doing Trump's bidding.
Alito wonders if U.S. will become a nation where the election ‘loser gets thrown in jail’. Does a president have a right to pardon himself?
Justice Samuel Alito is another case. PBS News Hour offered a clip of Alito asking Thursday if a predictable result would be “that presidents on the last couple of days of office are going to pardon themselves from anything that they might have been conceivably charged with committing.”
Michael Dreeben, a lawyer for special counsel Jack Smith’s team, responded that he really doubted that outcome. “It sort of presupposes a regime that we have never had, except for President Nixon, and as alleged in the indictment here, presidents who are conscious of having engaged in wrongdoing and seeking to shield themselves,” Dreeben said, adding, “this kind of dystopian regime is not going to evolve.” Alito also asked about whether an outgoing president’s fear that he might be criminally prosecuted “by a bitter political opponent” would lead the nation into a dysfunctional democracy “where the loser gets thrown in jail.” Dreeben replied that he believes the outcome would be the opposite.
The Republican men on the bench can't even take regard of the separation of powers Articles to find the contours of their responsibility. Contrary to Gorsuch's idiotic and grandiose assumption, their job is not to create law "for the ages" and Alito is to unself aware as well as lacking in intellectual honesty and courage to look at the calamity Trump has been and fashions himself as America's daddy, driving the car and turning around to tell all of us "others" to shut up and behave ourselves. He may just be that 16th or 17th century "jurist" reincarnated to resurrect the misogynistic witch trials. All in all, the right wing male members are incapable of honoring any whole clauses of the Constitution and its Amendments and will always re-establish rich, hetero, Christianist white male privilege and priority and the everlasting genetics lottery they've always cleaved to. Their charge is not to legislate, ironically, as Alito killed Roe because the 1973 Court, the far right believes, "legislated." It did not. It called time-limited questions of forced birth and found the 4th Amendment right to privacy in our persons. These clowns are legislating that history of white male privilege.
I confess I did not listen to every moment... however, what I did hear was the women of the supreme court, especially Ketangi Brown, asked the hard questions. I personally don't mind the future Presidents feel "a chill" before they decide to break the laws that the rest of America would have to confirm to.