The Supreme Court has just removed the last bar to Trump’s dictatorship

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Opinion,Andrew Coyne,Coyne

Everything Trump has said and done shows us he would assume unlimited powers if given the opportunity

The past week has made it materially more likely that America will soon be living under a dictatorship.

The Supreme Court has picked this of all moments, with a would-be dictator already, as it were, marching on Washington, to confer upon him and all future presidents near-total immunity from prosecution – not just in civil matters, such as presidents already enjoy, but criminal, and not just while they are president but for the rest of their lives.

It is consumed with the possibility that a president might be subject to baseless and retributive prosecutions after he had left office, and as such might be deterred from the “bold and unhesitating action” the office requires. That’s vanishingly unlikely, given a) this has never happened before in the history of the Republic, and b) the many procedural safeguards standing in the way of such a prosecution.

The “absolute” vs “presumptive” distinction likewise turns out to be largely meaningless. To overcome the presumption, prosecutors would have to show that a criminal charge posed “no dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.” Not that it would notintrude on executive authority, in the balancing language courts typically employ where more than one interest is in play:Even the “official” vs “unofficial” distinction breaks down.

 

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