“Orders the Navy SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power?” Immune,” hysterical Sotomayor wrote in her dissent.
You don’t have to be a lawyer to know that is ridiculous. SEAL Team 6 isn’t allowed to murder political opponents. The president would immediately be impeached and dragged out of the White House. There are potent safeguards to prevent this.
Will Sharp told Rob Schmitt on Newsmax last night:
“…an order like that would ever be given. It would never be carried out. The radical innovation here is the idea that the safeguard against those sorts of acts is post hoc criminal prosecution. Which has never been a feature of our constitutional system. Which has obviously never occurred before in American history.
“The liberal justices are trying to set up a system that is totally novel. That’s never been a feature of our constitutional system before, and I guess they’re angry that they couldn’t get the rest of the court to side with such a radical course of conduct here.”
The ruling merely repeated what the Constitution expects. When acting as president in official acts, he has absolute immunity. The Left doesn’t have a problem with immunity. They have a problem with Donald Trump having immunity.
The Court’s majority obliterated Sonia Sotomayor’s arguments. However, the media mostly repeats Sotomayor’s dissent. They aren’t as vocal about the majority’s response to the dissent. So, here it is.
The majority accused the liberal justices of fearmongering, ignoring the Constitution, and especially the separation of powers.
“As for the dissents, they strike a tone of chilling doom that is wholly disproportionate to what the Court actually does today — conclude that immunity extends to official discussions between the President and his Attorney General, and then remand to the lower courts to determine “in the first instance” whether and to what extent Trump’s remaining alleged conduct is entitled to immunity,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority.”
Chief Roberts hit her for ignoring the Constitution:
“Unable to muster any meaningful textual or historical support, the principal dissent suggests that there is an “established understanding” that “former Presidents are answerable to the criminal law for their official acts.”
“Conspicuously absent is mention of the fact that since the founding, no President has ever faced criminal charges—let alone for his conduct in office. And accordingly, no court has ever been faced with the question of a President’s immunity from prosecution. All that our Nation’s practice establishes on the subject is silence. Coming up short on reasoning, the dissents repeatedly level variations of the accusation that the Court has rendered the President “above the law.”
They are fear-mongering:
“The dissents’ positions, in the end, boil down to ignoring the Constitution’s separation of powers and the Court’s precedent and instead fear-mongering on the basis of extreme hypotheticals about a future where the President “feels empowered to violate federal criminal law.”
“The dissents overlook the more likely prospect of an Executive Branch that cannibalizes itself, with each successive President free to prosecute his predecessors, yet unable to boldly and fearlessly carry out his duties for fear that he may be next. For instance, Section 371—which has been charged in this case—is a broadly worded criminal statute that can cover “ ‘any conspiracy for the purpose of impairing, obstructing or defeating the lawful function of any department of Government.’” Roberts wrote.
Prosecutors do not get to decide on the separation of powers doctrine.
“The enfeebling of the Presidency and our Government that would result from such a cycle of factional strife is exactly what the Framers intended to avoid. Ignoring those risks, the dissents are instead content to leave the preservation of our system of separated powers up to the good faith of prosecutors,” Roberts wrote.
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