The left has their unisex panties in a bunch because SCOTUS voted 9-0 that a state doesn’t have the power to remove a candidate from the ballot. The decision was based upon the 14th Amendment, Section 3 of which the left claims granted states the authority to bar a person (in this case, Trump) from running for office if they were involved in an insurrection.
Section 3: No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
However, SCOTUS denied this claim, saying that Section 5 of the same Amendment vests that power solely in the Congress.
Section 5: The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
I am not going to go into too many specifics of this case, because I don’t really want to get into this case. Instead, I want to talk about the next Trump case, explain how SCOTUS is going to rule in Trump’s favor, then explain why it won’t matter. The above points matter in the upcoming case, and I will explain why.
The case involves the actions taken by Trump while he was contesting the results of the 2020 election. He is facing criminal prosecution for those actions which have resulted in 91 criminal charges spread among four cases. Trump is arguing that he has immunity for these actions because they were taken in furtherance of his official duties. I believe that he is correct for the following reasons:
Civil Immunity
After Nixon left the White House, he was sued for actions that he had taken while he was President. Nixon argued that a president cannot be sued for official actions taken while he is in office. The case is Nixon v. Fitzgerald, and it clearly establishes that Presidents have immunity from civil liability for acts taken while executing their official duties, even if they are sued for those acts after leaving office.
Criminal Immunity
The left counters that this doesn’t apply to criminal immunity. I think that they are wrong, because of the Federalist papers, debates at the Constitutional Convention, and the early history of constitutional interpretation demonstrate an assumption of absolute Presidential immunity. One of our founding fathers (Gouverneur Morris1– the youngest signed of the Articles of Confederation- see below)argued that the President can do no criminal act without accomplices who may be punished. In the event that the President were to be re-elected, that will be sufficient proof of his innocence. I assume that the unlawful act Morris referred to was taken as an official duty. I also assume that pulling out a handgun and shooting the first lady, accepting bribes, and the like would not be covered by immunity because they were likely not official acts. Note that actions taken while executing official duties need not be lawful, as long as they are official acts. The remedy here for the punishment of unlawful, official acts is impeachment and elections. To do otherwise would mean that Presidents would need to clear every decision and act through White House legal counsel, making the President a slave to his attorneys.
To me, this is important because it’s the reason why Obama can’t be prosecuted for assassinations of American citizens that were carried out on his orders. The fact remains that Obama, through his orders, committed murder of an American citizen, but since he did so in furtherance of his official duties, the only remedy available to the US is impeachment or subsequent elections. It has to be this way, or Truman could very well have been executed for the bombing of Dresden or Hiroshima as a war criminal.
The reason for this, is that the Executive is the only branch of government that consists of a single person. Congress has two houses, Constitutionally made up of at least 50 Senators and 50 Representatives, and the Supreme court, made up of multiple Justices. The Executive is the only branch with one member, meaning that it is the only one who needs criminal immunity for actions taken in official duties.
Official Duties
So the question remains, were the acts that Trump took to dispute the veracity and accuracy of the election official acts? I would say yes, they are. There are numerous laws about elections and how they are to be carried out. Enforcing those laws is the responsibility of the Executive and well within the purview of the Chief Executive.
Now this doesn’t mean that Trump is above the law. He was impeached for those actions less than a week after the end of his term, but the Senate failed to convict. Trump was indicted on August 1, 2023, for the conduct for which he was impeached, which is what this entire case is built upon. It’s important to note that his opponent in the election, who happens to be the current President, waited three years to file the indictment, an obvious attempt at election tampering.
The question for SCOTUS is this: “Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.” For the above reasons, I believe that SCOTUS has no choice but to vote in support of Presidential Immunity, or else it endangers the entire concept of the peaceful transition of power, meaning that Trump’s current criminal cases will disappear, at least at the Federal level.
So What Then?
With all of this being said, the left simply won’t allow Trump to return to the Oval Office. The Federal Bureaucrats simply can’t allow it, or he will begin swinging the metaphorical budget slashing machete. Should Trump regain the Presidency, a lot of Federal careers will come to an end- perhaps even entire departments.
The left simply HATES Trump, and will see him dead before he is permitted back into the White House. They can’t let Trump ruin their communist takeover.
For those reasons, expect violence when lawfare doesn’t work. Perhaps Trump will even be assassinated. I don’t think that they are desperate enough to take him out like Sadat was killed, but I don’t see Trump ever again being President.
1Gouverneur Morris was an important figure in the First Continental Congress. He cast the deciding vote against Court Martial for George Washington, which would have removed him from command of the Army, which would mean that he would not have been our First President. The other thing is that he argued that the poor would sell their votes to the rich and that voting should be restricted to property owners.
