"Fear for Democracy"
David Haggith

The Supreme Court just crowned all future US presidents and exonerated Richard Nixon.

While I never fully bought the Democrats’ claim that Trump is a threat to democracy, that was because I always knew he would ultimately be challenged in the Supreme Court if he went too far in exercising his official powers, as we’ve seen happening this year (whether he went too far or not).

Checks and balances in the system would prevent Trump or any president from ordering a military-enforced insurrection of the Capitol if a president wanted to stay in office on the basis that his impeachment and trial were corrupt or the election was rigged and illegitimate. After today’s Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity, I’m no longer sure those checks exist for any president, so I am concerned about our democracy, whether Trump wins or demented Biden stays on the throne and tries to cling to power.

The court ruled that either party (any president) has absolute immunity from criminal law in any exercise of his official powers without making it clear how one decides whether the president was truly acting in his official capacity. That broad interpretation is why Justice Sotomayor summarized the outfall today in her scathing descent to the 6-3 majority opinion, as follow:

When [a president] 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.

According to her critique of the decision, if a president were to order the CIA or FBI to bug the headquarters of the opposition party in a fancy hotel during an election campaign? Immune.

With this stroke of justice, Watergate would now be fine … or always was fine and we just didn’t know it. That was, after all, far less than ordering the navy to assassinate a rival (Putin style), which Supreme Justice Sotomayer says this new ruling now protects. Nixon was merely exercising his official authority over the FBI when he had the FBI bug the Democrats. Well, technically it was a former FBI agent who was assigned to actually carry out the wiretapping; and the action was ordered through Nixon’s henchmen, not directly by Tricky Dick (because that is how those kinds of things were carried out back in the day when presidents still needed “plausible deniability,” which they no longer do). Likewise, Nixon could have gotten away with concealing the tapes he had made or destroying them, since he was still president and the tapes had been made on his original orders to record his official meetings. 

Nixon’s biggest mistake, in fact, under the new Supreme Court ruling, would be that he didn’t directly order the FBI to bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. If he had, he would have been acting in his official capacity as Commander-in-Chief over the FBI.

Sotomayor added: “In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.” She went on, concluding her dissent by stating her “fear for our democracy.”

If you think we shouldn’t fear for our democracy after this Supreme Court ruling, then ask yourself how you will feel when demented Joe Biden uses absolute immunity—or more precisely the Democratic arm of the deep state that runs the White House while Biden stands, nods or tips over as president—to do anything he wants with the levers of government that are officially under control of the president. So long as the act is ultimately carried out under the approval and orders of Biden, he’s immune as is his concealment of the act and of those involved with it.

According to Sotomayer,

Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop.

With fear for our democracy, I dissent.

The key word there is “all.” Absolute immunity will be just as indemnifying throughout the remainder of Biden’s presidency as it will be for whomever takes the next presidential term. This is what extreme partisan justice gets you. If you think it is not partisan justice and like this ruling for Trump because he’s your man; just make sure you like it and fully support it for Biden and all future Democrat presidents, too. It cuts both ways in giving extreme empowerment through the now guaranteed absolute immunity of the Office of the President. 

Just think of what those Democrats and their presidents can get away with so long as they can dress it up well enough as an “official act.” Until now, all presidents had to be careful about how far they went because they weren’t so sure they had absolute immunity from criminal prosecution. In fact, MANY, if not most, believed they did not have that protection. In the very least, they were not sure. That check on power is as gone as if it never existed because the Supreme Court just ruled that it never did exist.

And the prospect of this ruling helping Biden when he needs to wiretap Trump this year—as Trump already accused Democrats of doing in the past inside his own NY tower—remains in play for now because, in spite of how badly most Democrats now want to ditch Biden, he and his family decided at Camp David over the weekend, he is staying in play. (See the numerous stories below on the outfall of the debate for Biden, Jill & Son.) That past “wiretap,” after all, was done under the official capacity of Obama in trying to make sure that Trump was not being played by Russia. It wouldn’t matter that they discovered he was not in cahoots with Russia, but only that they had reason to be concerned he was so needed, in their official opinion, to check it out. 

Therefore, if Ukraine wants to give #NoMoJo a kickback of, say, a billion dollars, as part of an official deal to provide Ukraine with $100-billion in arms, Biden can’t be prosecuted for making that criminal kickback part of the official deal. It was part of an otherwise legitimately official arms deal orchestrated by the president in his official capacity to carry out congress’s official appropriation. Throw in a little criminal activity because it doesn’t matter so long as it if fully part of the president carrying out his official functions.

Enjoy the new America where the Supreme Court has ruled that, in all official actions, the president is above every criminal law in the land. He can be as criminal as he wants so long as he can figure out a way to make his action part of an “official action” that is part of his constitutional role. If a Democratic president, for example, deems you a threat to the nation because of your conservative political views about guns, well, it’s the president’s job to investigate suspected threats to the nation; so, if he doesn’t get a warrant before searching your home, he can’t be prosecuted for the crime of not giving you due process. He could be impeached but not prosecuted in court. He’s still supposed to get the warrant, but if he didn’t, he’s untouchable because he had intel that said you were a threat. Of course, we all know how rock-solid that intel always is.

And you thought the military industrial complex that is overseen by the president was dangerous before this! Now its chief can be absolutely as criminal in his use of its vast power as he absolutely wants to be, and he is absolutely untouchable … so long as he does it within the context of performing his constitutional duties. In other words, if a president “errs” in how far he can go with those duties, well, he’s immune to prosecution. So, yes, you should be very much afraid.

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