NEW: Trump Appeals to SCOTUS on Immunity

“The president cannot function, and the presidency itself cannot retain its vital independence,” the brief said, “if the president faces criminal prosecution for official acts once he leaves office.”

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The brief, Mr. Trump’s main submission to the justices before the case is argued on April 25, continued to press an expansive understanding of presidential immunity, one that it said was required by the very structure of the Constitution.

“The question of a former president’s criminal immunity presents grave constitutional questions that strike at the heart of the separation of power,” the brief said.

Ed Morrissey

I'm sympathetic to the argument, but simply speaking, presidential immunity doesn't exist -- in the Constitution or anywhere else. There is no mention at all of presidential immunity in the Constitution, and it's not as if its authors were ignorant of the concept. There is an explicit immunity in Article I Section 6 for members of Congress, and even that is limited to preventing arrest while Congress is in session and using their speech and debate in Congress against them. Senators and Representatives can and have been prosecuted for crimes committed while in office; Gold Bar Bob Menendez is only the latest in a long and sleazy line of such cases. 

If we want to make this a policy, Congress would have to pass it into statutory law, and they have not done so. Between the liberal wing of the court and the originalists in the other wing, I think Trump will come away very disappointed. 

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