(I miss seeing this lawyers, somber, serious and scowly face daily)
DEEP STATE GETTING FREAKED OUT TRUMP WILL GET IMMUNITY
The Memo: Liberal fears build over Supreme Court Trump immunity decision
Niall Stanage Tue, June 25, 2024 at 5:48 PM EDT·4 min read1/2
Speculation is building about the possibility of the Supreme Court delivering a favorable ruling to former President Trump as he claims immunity from prosecution.
Even the current conservative-majority court would balk at finding that all presidents have unconstrained immunity, most experts believe.
But some kind of caveat-laden ruling that tosses the arguments about Trump’s legal exposure back to lower courts remains a strong possibility.
That scenario is enough to alarm many liberals.
Eric Holder, who served as attorney general in the Obama administration, sounded a warning during a recent interview with Nicolle Wallace of MSNBC. Holder alluded to the prospect of the justices ruling that a president can be prosecuted for private acts but not for “official” acts undertaken in the course of his duties.
In Trump’s case, this pertains to alleged offenses in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. A mixed ruling would mean lower courts would be asked to adjudicate which of Trump’s actions fit into either official or nonofficial category.
In practical terms, such a process would almost surely extend the case beyond November’s election. If Trump wins the election, he could simply instruct the Justice Department to abandon its prosecution of him — a move that would elicit howls of protest.
Holder, during his MSNBC appearance, characterized the possibility of a ruling like this as an argument that “a president can violate the American criminal law, if he or she is doing something in their official capacity.”
The former attorney general contended that such a finding would be “an absurd and dangerous conclusion.”
But, he added, “I’m worried, given the length of time that it has taken for the Supreme Court to decide this case, that something along those lines might come out of the Supreme Court.”
The delay in the Supreme Court delivering its ruling on the Trump matter is not so surprising.
The court typically reserves its most important rulings for the end of its term. In addition, even though the justices like to claim to be above petty political concerns, they might nonetheless be loath to weigh in before Thursday night’s presidential debate.
A ruling Wednesday or Thursday would cause much of that debate to be centered on the Court’s ruling — which would further accelerate the process of politicizing the court.
When oral arguments took place in April, several of the court’s six conservative justices seemed to suggest they could winnow out official from nonofficial acts taken by a president, with the latter prosecutable and the former not.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, for instance, suggested that unless such a distinction were to be made, former President Obama could face prosecution for some U.S. drone strikes overseas during his tenure.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/memo-liberal-fears-build-over-214806004.html