No. of Recommendations: 5
And now a majority of Justices all beholden to a Federalist Society world view that supports ever-increasing power for a President suddenly steps in using the "justification" of a lower court ruling outlining all of the "NO" scenarios to, in fact, turn that ruling on its head by launching a search for justifications to somehow FIND intent or the need for Presidential criminal immunity when there is ZERO support in the physical words of the Constitution, any legitimate history of the thinking of the original writers of the Constitution or in any legitimate reading of the larger legal history on this matter.All true....but almost impossible to square with
Nixon v. Fitzgerald, where the Court ruled that
civil immunity existed for all Presidential actions. Almost all of the reasoning in
Nixon as to civil suits applies to criminal liability as well. From the Court's syllabus:
The President's absolute immunity is a functionally mandated incident of his unique office, rooted in the constitutional tradition of the separation of powers and supported by the Nation's history. Because of the singular importance of the President's duties, diversion of his energies by concern with private lawsuits would raise unique risks to the effective functioning of government. While the separation of powers doctrine does not bar every exercise of jurisdiction over the President, a court, before exercising jurisdiction, must balance the constitutional weight of the interest to be served against the dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch. The exercise of jurisdiction is not warranted in the case of merely private suits for damages based on a President's official acts.https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/457/73...None of these things seem to be worth worrying about in the specifics of the crimes alleged in Trump's case. We don't want to preserve the President's ability to stage a
de facto coup, as Smith alleges. We don't want him to be able to order an assassination, either. But in a world where you can be brought up on charges for interfering with a federal proceeding - which is a fairly common thing for the two co-ordinate Constitutional branches of the Legislature and the Executive to do to each other - you might want to preserve the ability to step back and make sure that a sitting President isn't refraining from arguably lawful and appropriate (though hotly contested) actions because everything he does can land him in jail if his party loses the next election.
