In the last year, much of U.S. politics has been focused on the efforts of the Biden Administration to prosecute Trump for his crimes committed while he was trying to overturn his 2020 Presidential loss. After he was indicted, Trump claimed the U.S. Courts had no authority to prosecute him for any crime he may have committed while President. On July 1st, the Supreme Court ruled that presidents are “presumed” to be “immune” from criminal prosecution for official decisions and actions carried out while in office, with some exceptions. They handed Trump a partial victory in his effort to avoid ever having to stand trial for anything he did while President. More importantly, it greenlights future Presidents to abuse their authority without fear of legal consequences.
The Courts have never interpreted the U.S. Constitution as subjecting Presidents to much accountability by the courts, even when it’s clear they have abused their power.
Reagan illegally sold arms to Iran and used the profits to fund the Contras’ effort to overthrow the Nicaraguan government, even though Congress had passed laws forbidding this. FDR’s decision to lock up hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans simply because of their ancestry was an abuse of Presidential power subsequently acknowledged by the U.S. government. President Eisenhower’s decision to deport over a million Mexican immigrants, many of whom were legal residents or citizens, was a wholesale violation of their legal rights. President Obama ordered the assassination of an Arab American and his family living in Syria without any trial or legal authorization except one provided by his own White House lawyer. During the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, both Democrats, authorized the FBI to undermine the movements using illegal tactics like wiretapping and provocations to set Black freedom movement organizations into conflict with each other.
This ruling comes at a time when U.S. society is caught up in a political crisis in which millions of Americans have no confidence in the politicians and their system. The Supreme Court explicitly stated that their ruling was to encourage future Presidents to “take bold and unhesitating action” without fearing that the Courts would second-guess them after they left office. It’s a warning from the most powerful court in the country that when some future President decides to use his powers to stop us from asserting our rights as the crisis of American society intensifies, he will not be stopped by the law or the bill of rights. It’s a warning we have to take seriously.
We can’t fight by the boss’s rules, especially when he tells us he won’t follow them himself.
