Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, said Monday on MSNBC’s “The Andrea Mitchell Report” that the Supreme Court’s decision on former President Donald Trump’s presidential immunity case was effectively “absolute immunity.”
“I agree with Speaker Pelosi and Justice Sotomayor. This is a devastating blow to our system of government. In fact, this is probably the most eloquent and sophisticated dissent I’ve ever seen quoted in the press. It’s an opinion by Justice Brown Jackson, who said this is a five alarm bell for self-government in a democracy, and the reason is that the Court was flying the flag of the Constitution upside down,” Tlaib said.
He continued, “It suggests that because the acts are official — the president can do it but no one else can — that gives it a mask of immunity. It’s the opposite. Using the mask of presidential power to commit ordinary crimes that the rest of us can go to prison for is worse than doing something completely personal. The little role that remains for Jack Smith is to take this indictment storyline, hold a hearing before Judge Chutkan and try to figure out which of the contacts with Rudy Giuliani, which of the specific discussions with state officials, were truly private. This is really just a sham, a way for the court to pat itself on the shoulder and say it doesn’t give absolute immunity. I don’t think it does, but in effect, this is absolute immunity. This is dangerous and it means we need to be even more careful to never elect a president who thinks, much less says, that he wants to be a dictator on his first day in office.”
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