Is there anybody out there who wants to argue that complete Presidential immunity from criminal prosecution is a safe, necessary, responsible and civically practical policy? Hello?
I’m not even going to ask the question in the usual quiz form, other than to wonder who would agree Trump’s theory this other than a former President facing multiple partisan prosecutions of varying legitimacy designed to take him out of the next election, or an aspiring leader who endorses near dictatorial powers in a republic.
George Washington made it quite clear that the U.S. President isn’t a king; indeed, this may have been George’s most important among his many precedent-setting and self-imposed embellishments on the office. There have been Presidents who believed in treading carefully within a carefully moderated set of powers; there have been others, like Jackson, Lincoln, the Roosevelts and Nixon, who took the office in the other direction, sometimes to the point of defying laws as well as exploiting areas of Constitutional ambiguity.
Trump is not wrong to assert that a President needs a margin of acceptable error to function as the job has evolved from its original conception. It is also not surprising that he would feel this especially deeply, since he was not accorded the same margins as his most recent predecessors. The hostility to him personally was such that the Axis of Unethical Conduct (the resistance, Democrats and the news media) throughout his term resembled Dirty Harry telling a villain who has escaped arrest, “If you so much as spit on the sidewalk, I’ll be there.” However, a system in which there are no margins at all is obviously ripe for abuse, and even chaos.
I’m sure every President has had moments when they wished they had unlimited power; Obama mused about it more than once. We want a POTUS who has the wisdom and guts to do the right thing when a crisis looms, and not to be dissuaded by legal or electoral consequences. FDR’s finessing of the restrictions Congress placed on him while America was officially neutral in World War II is the classic example. With hindsight, we breathe a sign of relief that he broke those laws, but still FDR did not have a blank check, and he was the sort of man I wouldn’t want to have that metaphorical check. Needless to say, neither is Donald Trump.
Or, perhaps anyone. “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” said Lord Acton. Among the U.S.’s many experiments, challenging the wisdom of that accumulated conclusion has not been one. Civil immunity, qualified though it may be, is a reasonable protection for government officials, with appropriate exceptions. Criminal immunity is an invitation to disaster.
Ethics Alarms 
However, a system in which there are no margins at all is obviously ripe for abuse, and even chaos.
The margin/line was crossed by Trump. And he should be held responsible for breaking the law so egregiously.
He abused his power and caused the chaos.
Given you gave no specifics as to what statutes Trump violated I have a hard time assessing your point.
You do realize that if there is no margin, as Jack stated for Trump, anything you claim he did is a violation or as you said crossing the margin/line. That seems at odds with political norms. Something Trump is often accused of violating.
The problem with your logic is that both Obama and Biden have had their testing of limits summarily tossed by various courts perhaps even more so than Trump but I don’t spend my days tallying the score against politicians I don’t like. So it appears you are arguing rules for thee but not for me based on opinion and nothing else.
Imaging being portrayed as a criminal simply because the prosecutor says you violated the law. That is how I interpreted your comment.
I really wish that politicians and their surrogates would stop stating things using vague explanations or generalizations and absolutely no specifics by which a legitimate rebuttal can be offered.
Someone elese made this point for me.
https://reason.com/2024/01/19/slightly-imperfect/?comments=true#comment-10406877
– MWAocdoc
Absolute immunity is a bridge too far. No other official in the U.S., no state official, enjoys absolute immunity for anything done while in office. Even absolute immunity of judges only extends to judgments and orders issued from the bench. A judge that solicits bribes is not immune due to his status as a judge.
However, qualified immunity should still apply.
https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/qualified-immunity-legal-practical-moral-failure
As a matter of fact, every criminal prosecution should be dismissed absent an allegation of conduct that violated “clearly established law”.
Otherwise, we have situations like the Rick Perry indictment.
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATE MUST HAVE FULL IMMUNITY TO POST IN ALL CAPS
This isn’t much illumination of how much immunity a president is entitled, but the zugzwang is who decides what exceeds that immunity.
There are people who want to hurt Trump for irrational pursuits. Trump was given no quarter while president and most Democrats viewed literally everything he did as a crime. If no crime could be found, Democrats created one.
Trump emerged from a court proceeding a few days ago and had some red blotches on the palm of his hand. Within 24 hours, the AUC diagnosed the blotches as syphilis or leprosy. If ever there was a president who deserved immunity, it’s Trump.
The glass has been broken and is being crushed to dust.
I agree with this analysis, BS. I dare you to try to explain it to Bob.
Sock drawer…
Thje one immunity I would be in favor us is qualified immunity.
https://eji.org/issues/qualified-immunity/
this already protects police officers from many civil suits. qwhy not extend this application to criminal law.
Is the end result of this that each President at the end of their term Pardons themselves for all crimes committed prior to that date?
I would!