The Supreme Court seems poised to manufacture some form of criminal immunity for presidents

Some key takeaways from oral argument

Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral argument concerning former President Donald Trump’s bid for absolute criminal immunity for presidential crimes committed while in office. The outcome of this case could have grave consequences for not just Trump, but for the future of the presidency, as well. As Justice Neil Gorsuch said, “We’re writing a ruling for the ages.”

Gorsuch seemed to forget that the job of judges is to rule on the case before them, narrowly, to avoid legislating from the bench. This “conservative,” “textualist” Court is not going to legislate — instead, it’s going to effectively amend the Constitution to create a new criminal presidential immunity test that, in this moment, does not exist anywhere in the law, including in the text of the Constitution itself.

I joined Scott Detrow and Domenico Montenaro on NPR’s Trump’s Trials podcast to talk about the immunity argument — as well as the latest in what looks like the only one of the four criminal Trump trials that will move forward before the election.

I wrote about the immunity issue for The Bulwark, too.

Bizarrely, this case is another one that seems to be lining up along gender.

The five men on the Supreme Court seemed more concerned over the possibility of a hypothetical rogue prosecutor going after a decent president at some point in the future than they were concerned over the substantial evidence that an indecent, rogue president already committed serious federal felonies on January 6th, 2021.

Instead of protecting the rule of law, they are interested in protecting the likes of Donald J. Trump.

This approach is way, way off the mark. Here’s why…

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