The Supreme Court hands Trump a loaded gun | Moran

Published: Jul. 07, 2024, 7:01 a.m.

By Tom Moran | Star-Ledger Editorial Board

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It’s been a tough week to divert one’s eyes from the spectacle of President Biden’s epic meltdown, physically and politically.

But the week brought a second disaster that demands attention. The Supreme Court just ruled that American presidents have the right to break the law as they perform their duties. And we can’t change that ruling in November. Whoever wins, our wounded democracy will never quite be the same.

“This is calamitous,” says Ross Baker, professor emeritus at Rutgers University. “If this decision had been handed down with Ronald Reagan as president, people wouldn’t have to have such apprehension. But it coincides with Biden’s decline, and the greater possibility that Donald Trump will be elected…He will use these powers to the maximum. He’ll see it as a warrant to move against his enemies, real or fancied.”

Chris Christie might consider shopping for a new home in Toronto. Because Chief Justice John Roberts, in his majority opinion, singled out a president’s right to control his own Department of Justice, to use it in any way he sees fit, criminal or not. Trump could order the FBI to conduct an illegal search of Christie’s home, say, and order prosecutors to manufacture bogus evidence -- and Trump could never be prosecuted for those crimes.

“It’s hard to see how conferring absolute and presumptive immunity accomplishes anything but freeing the executive branch to devour everything and everyone else, especially opponents or critics of the administration,” says John Farmer Jr., the attorney general under Gov. Christie Whitman, and former dean of Rutgers Law School.

Scholars are poring over the 119-page decision, and they differ on the magnitude of this change. Roberts pushed back on the charge that this puts the president “above the law” since private acts can still be prosecuted as crimes. A president still can’t cheat on his taxes or beat his wife.