Chief Justice John Roberts’ immunity ruling didn’t hand Donald Trump everything he wanted and knocked back a core demand made by his lawyers, an MSNBC analyst wrote Friday.
But any positivity offered was smashed by the overall Supreme Court ruling.
Columnist Hayes Brown highlighted Roberts’ refusal to agree with the Trump team’s assertion that acquittal in an impeachment trial means a criminal prosecution can’t be pursued.
“Trump’s team chose to read that clause completely backward and argued that the Senate vote to acquit Trump in 2021 during his second impeachment trial meant he couldn’t be criminally tried over the same alleged behavior,” Brown wrote.
“In other words, a former president could only be charged in a criminal court if he’d first been found guilty in an impeachment proceeding. That claim bore almost no relationship with reality, let alone how English works. It also completely contradicted the arguments Trump’s defense team made during that impeachment trial, when it claimed that only the criminal justice system could convict a former president.
“Fortunately, Roberts’ opinion threw out that theory in its entirety.”
ALSO READ: 'Sick and tired of people like you': Morning Joe rips Trump ally for violence threat
Unfortunately, Brown wrote, the Supreme Court then took that win for Trump’s critics and made it moot with its overall ruling — that a president is immune from criminal prosecution for official actions.
“Because we can’t have nice things, in refusing one plea from Trump, Roberts instead granted him an even more powerful shield from accountability,” Brown wrote.
He went on, “Not even the sole bright spot in Roberts’ legal analysis is able to stand in the face of the carnage that the rest of the opinion does against the supreme law of the land.
“It’s horrifying to realize that there’s no crime that two-thirds of the Senate would convict Trump of committing in a second term, and no way to do so in criminal court should he ever leave office again.”
