John Roberts embraces Donald Trump’s vision of the presidency
The man who became famous for comparing judges to umpires who just call the ball and the headlines swung for the foul, to use a baseball metaphor again. Roberts expansively expanded the constitutional protections for any president who could potentially be impeached, all but guaranteeing former President Donald Trump a trial for rigging the 2020 election before the 2024 presidential race.
Emphasizing the “incomparable gravity” of presidential responsibilities and echoing the term “fearless,” he said a president is making “the most sensitive and far-reaching decisions ever entrusted to an official” and should handle his duties with “maximum fearlessness and impartiality.”
Along with five other of his fellow Republicans on the bench (three of them Trump himself), Roberts adopted an immediate vision of presidential impartiality. His traditional respect for the stature of the Court was replaced by an aspiration for the institution of the presidency.
Roberts normally embraces such overtly political divisions. He usually takes a legally institutionalized view. He also knows that in previous serious disputes over the separation of powers, US v. Nixon in 1974 and Clinton v. Jones in 1997, the justices have voted against the interests of the presidential incumbent.
In these cases, the judges voted against the interests of the president who appointed them.
But that is not this jurisdiction.
And today’s Roberts is not much different from the chief judge who mediated politically charged disputes, including the upholding of Barack Obama’s health care law “Obamacare” just months before the 2012 presidential election.
Today, the bench reveals a deeply divided courthouse. Rather than belittle Trump’s post-2020 chaos, the minority members emphasized it. They said Roberts’ “soothing fixation on the president’s need to act decisively and quickly” violates constitutional history and relevant prior cases.
In rebuttal, Roberts laughs at the three liberal minority representatives, making them radiate “an air of cool unhappiness.”
There was a time when Roberts sought to publicly clarify his disparagement of the extraordinary Trump, including by countering the former president’s attacks on the Court. But on Monday, Roberts offered a cool account of the events leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, avoiding references to the former president.
Roberts, who served in the Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush administrations, has favored executive power prerogatives in the past.
The decision in Trump v. USA, however, is more comprehensive and likely to define Roberts’ legacy as chief justice.
A nominee of President George W. Bush, Roberts will sit on the center bench beginning next October.
On Monday, as the 69-year-old chief justice read portions of his ruling from the stage, he used some of the most dramatic lines from his brief, saying that leaving newly elected presidents free to prosecute their predecessors would “eat an executive administration.”
Roberts said that under “a veil of potential impeachment,” the president would act uncertainly and fairly, making him virtually ineffective. The president should be protected from prosecution for all “constitutional powers” and be endowed with “at least a presumption of immunity from all official acts.”
The new “presumed innocence” provides Trump with a significant victory in the ongoing case brought against the president by Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith. In August, Smith charged Trump with various counts, including conspiracy, fraud and obstruction, for activities that culminated on January 6, 2021.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, speaking for the minority, increased the rhetoric that the majority favored Trump, “reshaped the institution of the presidency” and mocked “the principle that no one is above the law.”
Her voice brimmed with contempt as she mocked Roberts’ references to the president’s “independent and fearless action.”
Among the guests in the VIP section near the stage was Jane Sullivan Roberts, the wife of the chief judge. In the circle of lawyers sat Michael Dreeben, the Justice Department lawyer who argued for Smith in April and will now decide with the special counsel team how to proceed.
(Roberts and Dreeben have long been associated. Before joining the bench, Roberts was an appellate lawyer. In his first high court case, in January 1989, he met Dreeben, who was then an assistant attorney general. Roberts won.)
The case will return to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who had rejected Trump’s claim of impartiality, to determine which of Trump’s activities during the protests against the 2020 election results could be described as “unofficial” activities and thus punishable by law. Trump had previously argued that almost all of his activities surrounding the 2020 election were “official acts” and thus exempt from criminal prosecution.
As he turned away from Trump, Roberts argued that broad presidential immunity protects the “institution of the presidency,” not an individual president.
Despite subtle defenses in handling the Trump matter, Roberts expressed some concern about the legal proceedings in the Trump case. He said the justices had “little relevant case material” to guide consideration of the case – “a case we … took up in early proceedings, less than five months after we approved the government counsel’s request” to include the issue.
But the majority, in a single-sentence decision in December, denied Smith’s request to hear the consequential immunity issue sooner. The court did not set a hearing date until late April.
In early December, Chutkan ruled that Trump did not enjoy any immunity from prosecution. “Whatever immunities a sitting president enjoys, the country has only one chief executive at any one time, and that position does not confer a lifetime ‘get out’ pass from imprisonment,” she wrote.
The District of Columbia Court of Appeals confirmed that “for purposes of this criminal proceeding, Trump has become a citizen Trump, with all the defenses of any other criminal.”
In support of this view, Sotomayor offered a reminder of the early days.
“In a last-ditch effort to hold on to power,” Trump wrote, “he had attempted to exploit the violence and chaos at the Capitol by urging lawmakers to delay the electoral certificates and ultimately declare me the winner.”
Not for the chief judge.
“Unlike political authorities and the public at large,” he said, “we cannot focus exclusively, or even primarily, on current issues.”
Roberts wrote: “We must look further ahead.”
In the past, the chief justice had publicly rejected attacks on the court by former President Trump. Nevertheless, Roberts avoided directly mentioning Trump when attacking the events leading up to January 6, 2021, at the Capitol in his Monday ruling.
Unlike previous cases such as U.S. v. Nixon and Clinton v. Jones, in which judges ruled against the sitting president, Roberts and five other Republican-nominated judges adopted an unchanging view of presidential immunity in Trump v. United States, and protected President Trump’s actions in connection with the Capitol attack.
Also read:
2024-07-02 22:40:35
#John #Roberts #embraces #Donald #Trumps #vision #presidency
