The Supreme Court’s decision that Donald Trump has full immunity for “official acts” he took as president is so sweeping and vague that it opens the door for sitting presidents to do whatever they want without any accountability, including assassinating a political rival.
Legal experts said Monday that yes, as horrific and authoritarian as that sounds, the 6-3 decision by the court’s conservative supermajority means that President Joe Biden could theoretically order that Trump be killed and be immune from criminal prosecution.
“Presumptively, he has the power to assassinate a rival,” John Dean, who was White House counsel to former President Richard Nixon, told HuffPost on a call with the Defend Democracy Project, a group that advocates for free and fair elections.
Making matters worse, said Dean, is that the court ruled that “official acts” by a president can’t be used as evidence of criminal conduct for “unofficial acts.” So in a hypothetical scenario involving Biden ordering people to kill Trump, his actual giving of the order would be potentially unavailable for evidence, he said.
The former White House counsel, who called the Supreme Court’s decision “radical,” said the conservative majority also just raised questions about immunity for people who carry out a president’s “official” but criminal activities.
“When Nixon warned that, ‘When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal,’ he went on to say, ‘How could staff operate if they didn’t have a president who was totally immune?’” said Dean. “Presidents are good at giving orders…. They don’t execute those orders themselves. So you have a whole lot of people who have criminal exposure, and this opinion in my quick reading doesn’t cover that.”
Norm Eisen, who served as former President Barack Obama’s ethics czar and as special counsel for Democrats during Trump’s 2019 impeachment trial, said the dissenting opinion by the three Democrat-appointed justices is an unprecedented and dire warning.
Led by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the dissent says the immunity created by the ruling now “lies about like a loaded weapon” for any president to use however they want, for their own financial interests or political gain, knowing they are 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,” Sotomayor wrote.
“When dissenting justices warn that the majority may have just legalized murder by one individual in our country, that warning is to be taken very seriously,” Eisen said. “No more are the consequences of the majority opinion able to be read in isolation…. One of the majority party candidates has repeatedly, not in isolation, made a variety of autocratic promises, including to be a dictator on day one.”
Open Image ModalSupreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts (right) and Justice Clarence Thomas both concurred in the court’s opinion that Donald Trump enjoys complete immunity for “official acts” he took as president.
Alex Wong via Getty Images
During Supreme Court oral arguments in this case in April, Trump’s lawyers argued that it “might well be an official act” if a president ordered the assassination of a political rival, or ordered the military to carry out a coup to keep him in office, and therefore a president would be immune from criminal prosecution for breaking these laws.
Trump, of course, hailed the court’s decision on Monday.
“BIG WIN FOR OUR CONSTITUTION AND DEMOCRACY. PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!” he wrote on social media in all caps.
Biden, meanwhile, slammed the court’s decision as “a dangerous new precedent” and vowed he wouldn’t be the one to break the law in office.
Eisen, who also co-founded States United Democracy Center, a nonpartisan group advancing fair and secure elections, said Trump has been laying out extreme plans for a second term and that people should be horrified by his autocratic tendencies. He cited an online tracker he’s helped put together that spells out all the things that he wants to do.
“This opinion, as the dissents warn and other voices are now being heard to say, opens a dangerous tear in the American constitutional fabric, in the checks and balances that have helped us to survive this country for two and a half centuries,” said Eisen. “The opinion and the permissions it grants, for the first time in our history, must be read in that context.”
Open Image ModalDonald Trump’s lawyers argued before the Supreme Court in April that he should have complete immunity from criminal prosecution as president, even in cases like ordering the assassination of a political rival. Looks like conservatives on the court agree with this insane argument!
Matthew Seligman, a fellow at the Center for Constitutional Law at Stanford Law School and a partner at the law firm Stris & Maher, suggested the court’s decision reflects something much larger about the country’s political and legal culture ― namely that we’re at a point where we have to even talk how much immunity from criminal behavior should be granted to whoever wins the next presidential election.
“Whether it’s actually not illegal anymore, or it is illegal but you just can’t be prosecuted for it, we used to live in a country where there was more respect for the law than contemplating realistic hypotheticals of the president assassinating his political opponents,” he said.
As to whether he thinks the court just gave Biden the OK to assassinate Trump, Seligman said, “I don’t think Joe Biden would ever do something like that.”
Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, a co-founder and partner at Lawrence & Bundy LLC in Atlanta, Georgia, said people should not overlook that Sotomayor specifically warned that the door is now open to presidents beyond the next election potentially killing their political opponents.
“It’s important to note this clarion call from these dissenting justices,” said Lawrence-Hardy. “Because as preposterous as some of these possibilities seem to us right now, that we would be having this conversation right now seemed completely unthinkable a decade ago.”
Source link : https://www.huffpost.com/entry/supreme-court-immunity-trump-biden-assassinate_n_66831f73e4b06575b36641d8/amp
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Publish date : 2024-07-01 22:04:16
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