Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said on Saturday that she hopes the court’s decision granting former presidents broad criminal immunity will be overturned, saying her colleagues have done some “crazy things.”
Appearing for a civics education talk at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate, the liberal justice also publicly commented for the first time on this week’s midterm contests, when Democrats swept control of both chambers of Congress.
The justice specifically singled out the court’s 6-3 decision along ideological lines that former presidents enjoy at least presumptive immunity for their official acts. At the time, the justice wrote that it made Trump and his successors a “king above the law.”
Blame the SCOTUS for turning an unofficial Justice Department Policy into a Constitutional Principle. The Justice Department is run by the President, after all. What guarantee do we have that any investigation would be fair?
The President’s bogus lawsuit against the IRS awarding him eleventy billion dollars and “settling” for a ban on auditing his finances is a perfect example. A judge threw that out, legitimately, because when the President sues an agency he is in charge of, there are no adverse parties, and any “settlement” is a sham. (That whole affair would be an impeachable offense if someone with a blue tie tried that.)
That wasn’t a criminal prosecution, but imagine if Todd Blanche tomorrow announced that he had “investigated” Trump’s crypto grift and found that it was entirely above board, nothing to see there, and we should all just stop talking about it. Would we believe him?
The policy of the DoJ not investigating the President was meant to protect the integrity of the DoJ, not the President.
It was always envisioned that a truly corrupt President could be investigated after the fact, by a DoJ that doesn’t report to him. I have no clue why the SCOTUS saw something stricter in the penumbra of the Constitution.