'Collective amnesia' of SCOTUS’ conservative majority exposed: report

Five out of the six conservative US Supreme Court justices "seem to have made contradictory statements during their Senate confirmation hearings," according to The Daily Beast, when it comes to their views on the rule of law.

"Collective amnesia seems to have struck" as each of the justices, at one point, acknowledged that the president of the United States is not above the law, the Beast reports.

In December of last year, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell told viewers, "In July 1998," Justice "Brett Kavanaugh wrote a 38-page article for the Georgetown Law Journal, complete with 167 footnotes. The title of what is now the most important thing Brett Kavanagh ever wrote before becoming a Supreme Court justice is 'The President and the Independent Counsel.'"

READ MORE: Why Brett Kavanaugh already shot down Trump’s immunity-from-prosecution claim — 2 decades ago

In 1998, Kavanaugh wrote, "Congress should establish that the President can be indicted only after he leaves office voluntarily or is impeached by the House of Representatives and convicted and removed by the Senate."

The Washington Post's Aaron Blake reports:

Then-Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) in 2006 asked now-Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. whether a president could authorize a murder — perhaps by the intelligence community — and escape prosecution.

'Neither the president nor anybody else, I think, can authorize someone to — can override a statute that is constitutional,' Alito said.

Furthermore, the Beast notes:

'No man is above the law,' Neil Gorsuch told Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) during his confirmation hearing in 2017.

Gorsuch even doubled down, calling the court’s landmark 1952 decision in Youngstown v. Sawyer, which reigned in presidential authority, a 'brilliant opinion.'

Now, Blake writes, "There is no question that the court is saying that the president has a degree of immunity from criminal prosecution that other Americans don’t enjoy. The justices can argue that they are interpreting the law as affording that immunity in the branch of government rather than the man, but the practical implication is that a president can’t be criminally charged for things that other Americans can be charged with."

READ MORE: Analysis details options for 'actual' recourse after SCOTUS immunity ruling

The Daily Beast's full report is available here (subscription required).