The Patriot Post® · SCOTUS Rules Rightly on Immunity

The first thing that struck me about yesterday’s Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity was the commonsensical nature of it. Of course a president should have absolute immunity from prosecution for the things he does within his constitutional authority as president. And of course he should be legally accountable for his unofficial and private actions.

No, he can’t be prosecuted when a drone strike goes horribly wrong, or when he opens up a remote Alaskan wasteland for drilling, or when he pursues lawful means to contest an election. But, yes, he can most definitely be prosecuted when he shoots somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue.

A show of hands in a ninth-grade civics class could’ve arrived at this conclusion.

“The President is not above the law,” said Chief Justice John Roberts, stating the obvious for the 6-3 majority. “But Congress may not criminalize the President’s conduct in carrying out the responsibilities of the Executive Branch under the Constitution. And the system of separated powers designed by the Framers has always demanded an energetic, independent Executive.”

Again, more common sense here, and that leads to the second thing that struck me about the decision, and it’s far more troubling than the first thing: Why wasn’t the decision 7-2 or 8-1 or 9-0?

And the answer is politics. The Court’s liberal wing — which is far more “progressive” than liberal — couldn’t be seen as giving Donald Trump a legal victory. Because a decision on presidential immunity with one or more crossover concurrences would’ve eliminated all the post-decision hysterics we’re now hearing from the Left. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor incoherently argued in dissent:

When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. … Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.

This is nonsense because it ignores the framework of our three coequal branches of government, it ignores the separation of powers, and it ignores the remedies available to those other two branches. We have this thing called “impeachment,” for example, and we have a Constitution that specifically cites bribery as an impeachable offense.

Nevertheless, Sotomayor persisted: “Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”

This was a clownish dissent. The president is not above the law, and the chief justice said precisely that in his majority opinion.

It could’ve been worse, I suppose. We could’ve had, say, a sitting congresswoman vow to draw up impeachment articles against those six rogue justices. Oh, wait.

Yes, the same people who were just weeks ago assailing Donald Trump for his justifiable attacks on the deeply conflicted Judge Juan Merchan in New York are themselves now attacking six justices of the Supreme Court.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez aside, the stakes of this case were spelled out, as they often are, by Justice Samuel Alito during oral arguments back in April:

Now, if an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?

It’s a republic, but whatever. The answer to Justice Alito’s question is yes. The expanded answer is this: Look around you, you fools.

Let’s be clear: The office of the American president is in grave danger if its occupants are continually cowed into making decisions based not on what they think is right but on what they think will keep them out of a courtroom or a prison.

Said a deeply disappointed and perilously positioned Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer: “This disgraceful decision by the MAGA SCOTUS — which is comprised of 3 justices appointed by Trump himself — enables the former President to weaken our democracy by breaking the law. It undermines SCOTUS’s credibility and suggests political influence trumps all in our courts today.”

No, Chuck, it strengthens our constitutional republic by forbidding politically motivated prosecutors from charging former presidents for their official actions while in office. Again, here’s Chief Justice Roberts: “The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official.”

Joe Biden also mumbled in via teleprompter last night, past his bedtime, sporting a spray-on tan and having ingested enough drugs to seem less enfeebled. He said the High Court had done “a terrible disservice,” adding, “The American people will have to render a judgment about Donald Trump’s behavior. The American people must decide whether Trump’s assault on our democracy on January 6 makes him unfit for public office.”

This from the guy who’s taken unfitness for office to new heights. From the guy who boasted “They didn’t stop me” when the Supreme Court struck down his student loan giveaway, and he did it again by different means.

CNN’s Van Jones wins the Hyperbole Award for calling the decision “a license to thug,” to which constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley replied, “Well, if you drive through Washington, it seems like everyone is just breathing into paper bags today. … You just want to go up, put your arm around somebody and say, ‘It’s going to be okay.’ We have a Constitution that has survived for a reason.”

That we do. And we have a Supreme Court that peered into the abyss of political weaponization and said, “No, thanks,” not only for the sake of Donald Trump but for the sake of all future presidents, both Democrat and Republican.