The Threat of trump's Atrocities

Update 5/1/24 - Thanks again as always to Batocchio for including this article in Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please take the time to visit the rest of the blog, and get the vote out for Biden this 2024!

Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
-- Voltaire

Well, the Supreme Court finally heard donald trump's legal arguments for getting ABSOLUTE IMMUNITY for all the criming he did as President; including taking classified documents in violation of the Presidential Records Act, and his involvement in the January 6th Insurrection. 

It didn't go well (via Adam Serwer at the Atlantic (paywalled)):

The notion that Donald Trump’s supporters believe that he should be able to overthrow the government and get away with it sounds like hyperbole, an absurd and uncharitable caricature of conservative thought. Except that is exactly what Trump’s attorney D. John Sauer argued before the Supreme Court yesterday, taking the position that former presidents have “absolute immunity” for so-called official acts they take in office.

“How about if a president orders the military to stage a coup?” Justice Elena Kagan asked Sauer. “I think it would depend on the circumstances whether it was an official act,” Sauer said after a brief exchange. “If it were an official act … he would have to be impeached and convicted...”

The Democratic appointees on the bench sought to illustrate the inherent absurdity of this argument with other scenarios as well—Kagan got Sauer to admit that the president could share nuclear secrets, while Justice Sonia Sotomayor presented a scenario in which a president orders the military to assassinate a political rival. Sauer said that might qualify as an official act too. It was the only way to maintain the logic of his argument, which is that Trump is above the law...

Trump’s legal argument is a path to dictatorship. That is not an exaggeration: His legal theory is that presidents are entitled to absolute immunity for official acts. Under this theory, a sitting president could violate the law with impunity, whether that is serving unlimited terms or assassinating any potential political opponents, unless the Senate impeaches and convicts the president. Yet a legislature would be strongly disinclined to impeach, much less convict, a president who could murder all of them with total immunity because he did so as an official act. The same scenario applies to the Supreme Court, which would probably not rule against a chief executive who could assassinate them and get away with it.

The conservative justices have, over the years, seen harbingers of tyranny in union organizing, environmental regulations, civil-rights laws, and universal-health-care plans. When confronted with a legal theory that establishes actual tyranny, they were simply intrigued. As long as Donald Trump is the standard-bearer for the Republicans, every institution they control will contort itself in his image in an effort to protect him...

It would be madness for the SCOTUS Justices to consider their own destruction if they allowed Absolute Immunity for Presidents to move forward. A single man with the power to do what he will and never held to account will easily sweep aside every law and every norm until even the courts are no more. And yet, because it's trump begging for that immunity - because it will save him from the justice he's earned over 40-plus years of fraud and other misdeeds - we could well have five conservative Justices taking the absurd move to free trump from his legal fate... and create a situation where trump can become dictator on Day One of a second term and never let go. Serwer adds:

Trump has the conservative justices arguing that you cannot prosecute a former president for trying to overthrow the country, because then they might try to overthrow the country, something Trump already attempted and is demanding immunity for doing. The incentive for an incumbent to execute a coup is simply much greater if the Supreme Court decides that the incumbent cannot be held accountable if he fails. And not just a coup, but any kind of brazen criminal behavior. “The Framers did not put an immunity clause into the Constitution. They knew how to,” Kagan pointed out during oral arguments. “And, you know, not so surprising, they were reacting against a monarch who claimed to be above the law. Wasn’t the whole point that the president was not a monarch and the president was not supposed to be above the law?”

Never mind how such a legal decision could unleash absolute power from the current Presidency of Joe Biden. The Far Right Justices may try to carve out narrow definitions of "immunity" in order to save trump from both the classified documents trial and the January 6th trial, but even then they will grant that same immunity to Biden, since even under their twisted view of the Constitution they can't grant exemptions to one (trump) specific person here. And if Biden's people are smart enough, they can figure out how to expand that "immunity" to let Biden go directly after donald trump - and his Russian-backed GOP buddies - as a clear and direct threat to the national security of the United States.

Those conservative Justices - and their Republican party allies - may think that Biden is too "institutional" in respecting the norms of political office, but they themselves are creating a partisan environment - and are openly causing disruptions in foreign policy and national security - to where Biden may have no choice but to impose the expanded Executive powers the Supreme Court is about to unleash. Like Lincoln during the crisis of secession and civil war, Biden's own congenial world-view will have to move aside for the practical reality of bending the spirit of the law to prevent trump and his lackeys from breaking the entirety of the law itself.

Because on this point, Serwer has it right:

No previous president has sought to overthrow the Constitution by staying in power after losing an election. Trump is the only one, which is why these questions are being raised now. Pretending that these matters concern the powers of the presidency more broadly is merely the path the justices sympathetic to Trump have chosen to take in order to rationalize protecting the man they would prefer to be the next president. What the justices—and other Republican loyalists—are loath to acknowledge is that Trump is not being uniquely persecuted; he is uniquely criminal.

The Republicans have tied their fate to a man who is more con artist than conservative, who is more destructive to the nation than to the Democrats.

For the love of God and for the love of the Constitution and everything America ought to stand for, these Justices need to let trump go, let him face the legal system he's mocked for too long.

And for the nation, for the LOVE OF GOD, MOM, AND APPLE PIE, stop voting Republican until all their crooks are gone from power.