How SCOTUS is encouraging a 'flurry of crimes' in second Trump term: ex-federal prosecutor

30 May 2024

Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, special counsel Jack Smith's election interference case against former President Donald Trump remains in limbo.

Trump is claiming that because he was still president in late 2020 and early 2021, he enjoys "absolute immunity" from the charges in Smith's indictment. Until the High Court renders a verdict, Smith's case is on hold. And the High Court's far-right supermajority has the power to doom the case altogether.

In a lengthy, in-depth op-ed published by Politico on May 30, law professor, author and former federal prosecutor Kimberly Wehle warns that the Roberts Court is paving the way for a second Trump Administration to be even more dangerous than the first if Trump defeats President Joe Biden in November.

"Any day now," Wehle explains, "the Supreme Court could issue its decision in former President Donald Trump's case seeking immunity from criminal prosecution. While the most direct impact of the decision will be on how free presidents may feel to skirt or break criminal laws, the decision could also indirectly affect one of the other powers granted to U.S. presidents: the pardon power."

According to Wehle, the High Court's decision in the immunity case "could set the stage for an Oval Office crime spree the likes of which we've never seen before."

"Until the Supreme Court agreed to hear Trump's bid for criminal immunity," Wehle argues, "American presidents just assumed that committing crimes in office would come at a price. Yet judging by their questioning, a handful of justices seem eager to use the pardon power and their assumption that the power is absolute as a kind of excuse for expanding the presidential prerogative to include criminal activity…. All this while Trump has already made clear that he plans to pervert the pardon power again if he wins in November."

Veteran television journalist Dan Rather has used the phrase "flock of felons" to describe all the Trump allies who have faced criminal charges — a group that ranges from Paul Manafort (one of Trump's 2016 campaign managers) to GOP operative Roger Stone to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Trump himself is facing four criminal indictments, and jury deliberations are now underway in his hush money/falsified business records trial. But the other three cases appear unlikely to go to trial before presidential election in November.

"The stage is now set for a flurry of crimes committed openly and even seditiously with the expectation that they can and will be shielded by the pardon power — and probably some measure of criminal immunity," Wehle warns. "If that happens, the country will have the Supreme Court to thank."

Kimberly Wehle's full Politico op-ed is available at this link.

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