Donald Trumpās 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 presidentās claim to immunity, however, is the fact that the Supreme CourtĀ took the case in the first place. Itās not just that thereās an obvious response ā no, the president is not immune to criminal prosecution for illegal actions committed with the imprimatur of executive power, whether private or āofficialā (a distinction that does not exist in the Constitution) ā but that the court has delayed, perhaps indefinitely, the former presidentās 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 ā with the defeat of John Adams and the Federalists at the hands of Thomas Jeffersonās Republicans in the 1800 presidential election ā 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 nationās history, might try to pardon himself for his own criminal behavior.
You are talking like a ratioinal, educated human being. The problem is that we are not dealing with rational human beings.
We are dealing with a man who has openly said he wants to establish authoritarian rule, a political party cheering him on, and multiple federal judges who are eagerly paving the way for him.
As you said, the term isnāt specified in the Constitution. Which means that, in reality, the term āofficial actā means whatever the hell the Supreme Court wants it to mean. If the Supreme Court wants to say that the phone call to Brad Raffensperger was an āofficial actā because it was a phone call to another government official, they can. If the Supreme Court wants to say āPresident Trump packed the documents from the White House and sent them for storage at Mar-A-Lago while he was still technically president, therefore itās an official actā, they can. If the Supreme Court says that having Hunter Biden jailed right before the election is an official act because heās under federal investigation, they can. You may not agree with it, but thereās absolutely nothing you can do to stop it either.
And just because thereās no official role for the President in the Constitution, that has never stopped the Supreme Court from just making something up. Heck, the broad powers that they exercise now only exist because the Supreme Court themselves made it up out of the blue and nobody bothered to stop them. If they want to say that the President āoverseeingā the election process and āensuring its fairnessā is one of his official duties, they can. Thereās nothing stopping them.
And even if there was, theyāre all but untouchable. They can basically just say āweāre doing it anyway because fuck you thatās whyā. The only way it would be overturned would be if Congress takes direct action (hahahahahahahahaha) or if they were to impeach and remove the judges that voted for it (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA). Remember, these arenāt normal people. These are people who are literally above the law and are now beginning to leverage that to their benefit to further entrench their rule.
I hate how right you are.