Over half a century ago, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon told TV interviewer David Frost the following on May 19, 1977: “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”
Of course, Nixon resigned in the face of the Watergate scandal.
Half a century has passed, and in the case Trump vs The United States, the Supreme Court has enshrined that principle into law. Calling it “official immunity” the court has endorsed a theory known as “The Unitary Executive Power,” where the president is impervious to prosecution as long as he or she acts in their official capacity. Moreover, the president who is choosing his own judges also gets to choose his own judgments.
Remember that old saying, “No man is above the law”? That is no longer the case for a majority of the Supreme Court, six justices, has ruled that if that man is the president, he now has official immunity.
What that also means is that the former president, except for his New York prosecutions, may not see the inside of another courtroom. One justice, dissenter Sonia Sotomayor suggests, “The U. S. President might as well be called ‘King’.”
This is judicial conservatism gone mad.
With love, not fear, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal