LogFAQs > #980132243

Oh. Right. I guess I never posted my thoughts on how all that went.

I listened to the oral arguments and basically agree with that take. Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch all very much seemed like they wanted to grant some amount of immunity and while the liberals and Barrett seemed to reject Trump's nonsense for what it was that leaves Roberts as something of a kingmaker and while I'd put him as the toughest read on his lean from the arguments I also expect his "my legacy!" pearl clutching will lead him to want to avoid a 5-4 and get as close to a unanimous ruling as he can - which will necessarily require making concessions to the Alito group.

I don't think he'll go as far as Alito did (who seemed to openly be looking for a line he could draw that would put Trump on the side of immune but to keep the raised hypotheticals of "Order the SEALs to assassinate political opponents" subject to prosecution) and with no sense of irony claimed that not granting immunity would make it more likely for presidents to try and abuse their power to maintain office upon losing an election. He and Thomas both tried to trip up DOJ with what they thought were "gotchas" by trying to bring up stuff from history and asking if they would be liable to criminal prosecution. Alito brought up FDR and internment (a favorite tactic of Alito is to concern troll like this) and seemed to short-circuit when DOJ said "Yes." In his seeming surprise he asked for an elaboration and DOJ basically replied "Because Korematsu was finally overturned, yes, it would be. But because this Court had endorsed such a position - perhaps wrongly - it probably wouldn't have been liable at the time." and Thomas brought up something and asked why wasn't it prosecuted by DOJ... leaving out that said operation was ordered by JFK... who DOJ would not have considered charging post-presidency for a pretty obvious reason.

But I can definitely see him going closer to Kavanaugh and Gorsuch who kept going "Oh, we don't want to talk about this case teehee. We're just super worried about future presidents~!" and jumping at the chance to devise some test to distinguish between "official" acts which he'll say are immune and "private" acts which won't be and then telling the lower courts to sort it out before they can go to trial - thereby adding months to the proceedings and pushing the trial well past the election. A technical ruling against Trump but one that completely achieves his objective of delaying the trial under after the election - where, should he win, he can just order DOJ to dismiss the case entirely. Not exactly a novel take - I think media outlets were openly predicting such an outcome before oral arguments - but I was actually surprised Kavanaugh and Gorsuch were so openly sympathetic to Trump's case here. I thought if it was just Alito and Thomas alone pushing for this shit it was possible that they would just shut it down but now I have very little optimism of such a complete rejection.

Pretty grim shit.