Subject: Insight into USSC Thinking on Trump
Lawrence O'Donnell began his 12/12/2023 show with a breathless, "breaking news" story about insight that has been gleened from the USSC that confirms they are inclined to concur with Judge Chutkan's ruling that Trump has no federal immunity from prosecution. In a document that might be as iron-clad as the leaked Alito opinion in Dobbs overturning Roe, the document O'Donnell referenced proved at least one judge on the court appointed by Trump made it absolutely clear that impeachment and conviction after impeachment was solely a vehicle to REMOVE a President from office but any President is subject to criminal prosecution AFTER leaving office voluntarily or being tossed out via impeachment.

There's only one key problem with O'Donnell's reporting.

The document he is citing was written by Brent Kavanaugh in 1998 (O'Donnell cited 1997) and published in the Georgetown Law Review. You may recall that Kavanaugh was a member of Ken Starr's team investigating Clinton so two things are immediately apparent about this opinion:

* Kavanaugh wrote that opinion in the context of misbehavior of a DEMOCRATIC President
* such an opinion could thus be completely ignored when dealing with a REPUBLICAN President

In fact, Kavanaugh has written articles since then that (SURPRISE!) are more "enlightened" about the burdens of office, concluding that maybe Presidents shouldn't be subjected to civil lawsuits for pre-Presidential acts while President. He has been on record as favoring enactment of laws to explicitly disallow criminal indictment of sitting Presidents. Even if he currently agrees that a "generic" President obviously CAN be indicted and tried for allegations of crimes conducted while in office AFTER leaving office, that is no gaurantee he will urge much less LEAD an effort within the court to IMMEDIATELY reject claims of immunity to ensure the Trump case moves forward to allow conclusion of a trial prior to an election. He could partner with the rest of the Federalist Society bloc on the bench and slow roll this case until the last day of the term, at which point whatever ruling they might make might very well be pointless at that time.

There's no ah-ha document here. There's no assurance the USSC is a lock to reject a claim of immunity. What we have here, as Molly Ivins used to say, is a case of situational ethics. And this court is nearly devoid of ethics.


WTH