Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) lashed out against conservatives on the Supreme Court after the April 25 hearing on President Donald Trump’s immunity claim.
He said that the court’s conservative majority seemed so sympathetic and “partisan” toward the former president that the court may as well be relocated to the Republican National Committee headquarters.
The left-wing lawmaker, who has long been sharply critical of President Trump and the Supreme Court, was a member of the former January 6 Select Committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, security breach at the U.S. Capitol. He was lead impeachment manager, akin to lead prosecutor, during the second Senate impeachment trial of President Trump in 2021.
“They should move the Supreme Court over to the RNC headquarters, because they’re acting like a bunch of partisan operatives,” the lawmaker said. He also referred to the court as the “right-wing, reactionary Supreme Court.”
Conservatives, who hold a 6–3 majority over liberals on the court, don’t always vote as a bloc, but they have come together in recent years to recognize expanded gun rights, strike down Roe v. Wade and return the regulation of abortion to the states, and curb the federal government’s reach in environmental regulation. Three of the current justices—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—were appointed by President Trump.
On April 25, after an extended discussion of the difference between a president’s official actions and private actions unrelated to his official duties, the justices appeared skeptical of President Trump’s claim that he was entitled to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution. They indicated they might rule he has some kind of immunity. The Supreme Court may end up remanding the election interference case back to the federal district court in Washington with instructions on what constitutes official and private acts for further fact-finding proceedings.
Such a move would further delay President Trump’s trial in Washington and might hamper the other proceedings in Georgia, Florida, and New York, giving him a strategic win as he seeks to put off cases until after the presidential election this November.
During the Supreme Court hearing, his attorney, D. John Sauer, acknowledged some of the things his client was charged with might constitute private acts for which he could be prosecuted after leaving office.
At the same time, the lawyer also suggested a president could not be prosecuted even if he ordered the military to eliminate his political opposition.
This reflects the traditional understanding of presidential immunity enshrined in Department of Justice policy, which holds that a president cannot be charged with a crime while in office. Instead, the proper course of action is to impeach him in the House of Representatives, and then try him in the Senate, with a view to removing him from office. President Trump was impeached twice, and acquitted twice in the Senate, though the second acquittal came weeks after he left the presidency.
Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Mr. Sauer if “fundamentally evil” actions would be shielded from criminal prosecution.
“If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?” Justice Sotomayor said.
Mr. Sauer replied that depending on the facts of this hypothetical situation, “We can see that could well be an official act.”
Liberal Justice Elena Kagan asked, “How about if the president orders the military to stage a coup?”
The lawyer replied, “I think it would depend on the circumstances whether it was an official act.”
Addressing special counsel Jack Smith’s attorney, Michael Dreeben, conservative Justice Samuel Alito said, “I’m sure you would agree with me that a stable democratic society requires that a candidate who loses an election, even a close one, even a hotly contested one, leave office peacefully, if that candidate is the incumbent.”
“If an incumbent who loses a very close, very hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement, but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?” the justice said.
On the TV show, Mr. Raskin said Justice Alito’s comments support President Trump’s “narcissistic criminal worldview” that holding him accountable would encourage “violent coups.”
Justice Alito’s question was “the most astonishing thing for me today,” the congressman said.
“He actually asked whether holding the president criminally accountable for actual crimes committed—whether murder or coup or you name it—whether holding them accountable would actually encourage them to stage more violent coups to stay in office to avoid prosecution, which buys completely into Donald Trump’s narcissistic criminal worldview,” he said.
“I mean, for all of American history, we’ve said presidents are subject to criminal prosecution if they commit crimes,” he continued.
“Now they say, well, if you’re really mean to Donald Trump, and you hold him accountable the way every other American citizen is accountable, then he’ll really overthrow the government. He’ll really bring out the big guns, and we can’t afford that.”
Mr. Raskin called that kind of reasoning “masochistic capitulationism to Donald Trump’s authoritarianism.”
“Of course you’ve got to hold the president accountable to the law—it’s the basic premise of our law that no one is above the law, including the president,” the lawmaker said.
“Now we’ve got a bunch of justices who are asking questions that indicate that they are as corrupted as members of Congress who I served with,” he added.
