Now, I apologize for all the capital letters, but, as I say, things are getting really weird, because Charles C. W. Cooke1—or “Cee Dubya”, as us Beltway Bros like to call him—who is only “senior writer” at the National Review, that’s all!—has been talking some serious trash about right-wing windbags on the U.S. Supreme Court who are just dying to give El Donaldo a pass on all this sedition stuff. As Charlie puts it, There Is No ‘Immunity Clause’!
Naturally, this being the National Review and all, and Charlie being a gent and all, he doesn’t, well, name names, but we all know both who and what he’s talking about when he complains about the conduct of the nine Supreme Court justices during the recent oral arguments occasioned by the law suit Trump v. United States, in which Trump’s lawyers claimed that, as a former president, El Jefe should be immune from any and all criminal charges stemming from his conduct during his term of office, to wit:
I was irritated to observe that most of their [the justices’] time was taken up with the consideration of consequences. “If the president is immune, then what?” “If the president is not immune, then what?” “What about his private conduct?” “What about the public decision-making process?” “What about the public’s expectation that the executive branch is honest?” In a vacuum, these are fair questions, but it is simply not the role of our courts to consider them at any length.
Why not? Because there is no immunity clause! Maybe that’s a bad idea, maybe it would be a good idea to get one, but that would require a constitutional amendment, and that is not the Supreme Court’s job! So they should just butt the fuck out!
They aren’t going to, of course. Thomas and Alito certainly want to give Trump a full pass. Roberts “probably” can’t/won’t go that far, but he definitely wants to slow-walk the whole shebang—“why can’t we just put this on the shelf for a year or two and then go back and have a look at it? It all might be much ado about nothing.” And that, I think, is precisely what the Court will end up doing, though I’ve been holding back on going full bitch on the Court until the decision drops. Hey, maybe it will be good news! (I am such a sucker.)
But Charlie, bless his little Anglican heart, isn’t so cautious or patient. I guess they teach ’em smart at Lady Margaret Hall (see footnote below).
Afterwords
To be fair (and, hey, “fairness” is my middle name), I have previously caught Mr. Cooke in the act of not being happy with Donald Trump. But here, I think, one can detect an actual desire—implicitly rather than explicitly expressed, to be sure—to see Donald in the slammer.
If you want some more backstory on Cee Dubya, Wikipedia tells us that he is a graduate of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Before attending Oxford, he attended King's College School, Cambridge, and read for his A-levels at Kimbolton School, which, I am given to understand, is a totally cool thing to do. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Oxford that was, later, promoted to Master of Arts by seniority, as is customary at Oxford and Cambridge for graduates—though, I guess, nowhere else. Not too shabby!