Should Presidents Get Immunity?

It was less than two weeks ago, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments that Donald Trump (and presidents in general) should receive immunity from criminal prosecution for acts they have committed while in office. Now, the high court won’t rule on this until most likely the end of June so we’ve got about another couple of months before we hear the outcome. But there are some interesting points that Trump’s legal team makes.

First of all, presidents are immune already from civil prosecution for acts committed while in office. That ruling came down about 40 years ago, right after Richard Nixon resigned over the Watergate affair. But no one has tried to get that immunity expanded to criminal prosecution until now. And the only reason it’s before the high court now is because of the lawfare that we’ve been witnessing in New York, Georgia, and with Jack Smith, and the January 6th fiasco, as well as the Mar a Lago classified documents case.

I’m going to refer to a couple of things I’ve talked about for quite some time. The first is the Harry Reid Rule (or that’s what I call it). It was when Harry Reid was Majority Leader in the Senate and passed a rule that appointees other than Supreme Court Justices needed a simple majority, not 60 votes to get appointed to whatever position they were up for. It backfired on Reid because when Mitch McConnell took over as Majority Leader, he expanded it to include the SCOTUS nominees. And that’s what led to the 6-3 conservative court we have today.

The second thing that is going to come back to bite Democrats is what Chuck Schumer did in the Alejandro Mayorkas impeachment. He basically made a motion that the impeachment was unconstitutional, and it passed along party lines. What this basically means is that if there is an impeachment dealing with the out of power party in the Senate, the party in power can simply state that the charges are unconstitutional, and kill the impeachment without a trial. And while you know I’m not a fan of impeachment unless you’ve got enough votes to not only impeach in the House, but convict in the Senate, this was a really stupid move on Schumer’s part. It will come back to bite the Democrats as soon as the Republicans lose the House and take over the Senate. Wait and see.

Well, in this case, with presidential immunity on the line, what happens if a president is worried that he’s going to be charged with a crime if he makes the wrong decision. Does that top him making the right decision because of his fear of getting charged and prosecuted? Take the case of Bobo Obama, who ordered a drone strike in the Middle East and took out a 16 year old American citizen, who just happened to be a member of ISIS. Could Obama, without immunity, still today be charged with that boy’s murder? After all, there is no statute of limitations on murder.

And what about Joe Biden, and the problems he’s got with the whole Hunter Biden fiasco? Could he be criminally charged with accepting bribes from Ukraine, Romania, and China in exchange for favorable outcomes to those countries while he was Vice President or even President? Presidents, of both parties, need to have the ability to make tough decisions without the fear of being called on the carpet for it later on. Now, that’s not to say that a sitting president has carte blanche to go after anyone they choose anyway they choose. There has to be some sort of litmus test. But that could very well be decided by the lower courts. I doubt the Supremes are going to get that involved in it. But I certainly can see them sending this back down the line and having the lower courts come up with what circumstances would need to exist before a president could invoke immunity on a criminal charge.

And for Donald Trump, that would mean victory. That would mean that there would be no way to hold this trial prior to election day. It would take months at the very least for a lower court to gather the information, hold hearings, and decide what constitutes immunity and what doesn’t.

And if that happens, Donald Trump could very well have skated on all four of his trials on his way to reelection.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!