by John W. Whitehead, Rutherford Institute:
“The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”—Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissenting in Trump v. United States
The U.S. Supreme Court has made it official: the president of the United States can now literally get away with murder.
In a devastating 6-3 ruling in Trump v. United States that is equal parts politically short-sighted, self-servingly partisan, and utterly devoid of any pretense that the president is anything other than a dictator, the Supreme Court has validated what Richard Nixon once claimed: “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
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As Justice Sotomayor concluded in her powerful dissent:
“The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune. Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today. Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done.”
The damage has indeed been done. Indubitably. Irrevocably. Unarguably.
Every American should be outraged, offended and afraid of what this ruling means for the future of our nation.
There can be no more pretending that we live in a constitutional republic. It’s all out in the open now. This is a dictatorship: Hitler has finally stepped out of the shadows.
The rule of law may have been on life support for a long time, but this ruling pulls the plug.
The facts of the case itself, which asks whether former president Donald Trump is immune from prosecution on charges that he attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election, are less important than the ramifications of this ruling, which go so far as to dramatically expand the power of the presidency, rendering whoever occupies the Oval Office lawless and unaccountable.
This is exactly how tyranny rises and freedom falls.
In a textbook example of doublespeak, Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the Supreme Court’s six-person conservative majority, essentially declared that presidents are not above the law and then turned right around and ensured that presidents can do whatever they want in their official capacity without being held accountable or criminally liable.
As Roberts noted, “We conclude that under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of presidential power requires that a former president have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office. At least with respect to the President’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute.”
Here’s the thing, however: this isn’t anything new. Not really.
Although the Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers, in recent years, American presidents have claimed the power to completely and almost unilaterally alter the landscape of this country for good or for ill. The powers amassed by each successive president through the negligence of Congress and the courts—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whoever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability.
