The Supreme Court says America now has a king. In November, it could be Donald Trump

America has a king after all.

Make no mistake: That’s the ugly result of Monday morning’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that Donald Trump is entitled to “absolute immunity” from criminal charges for using the powers of his office to try to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.

The nature of presidential power “requires that a former President have some immunity from criminal prosecutions for official acts during his tenure in office,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the 6-3 court majority. “At least with respect to the President’s exercise of his court constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute.”

It’s a ruling that would have shocked America’s founders.

They waged a revolution designed to throw off the tyranny of an unaccountable king, and built a Constitution expressly intended to empower a president to govern energetically but not abusively. There had to be accountability. There had to be restraints.

“The President of the United States would be liable to be impeached, tried, and, upon conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors, removed from office; and would afterwards be liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law,” Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist Papers in 1788, trying to convince his countrymen to adopt the Constitution.

Hamilton contrasted those restraints on the presidency with “the person of the king of Great Britain” — whom, he noted, “is sacred and inviolable; there is no constitutional tribunal to which he is amenable.”

So much for that.

Thanks to the court’s ruling, the distinction between king and president is now much less clear. The results are dangerous — and possibly even fatal — to one of the foundational ideas underpinning American democracy: the idea that no person is above the law.

And it leaves presidents — not just Donald Trump, but any president — newly free to weaponize the powers of the office.

...continued

swipe to next page