On the morning of April 25, the nine Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that ultimately decided Presidents have "absolute" immunity for crimes committed while in office if those criminal actions can be considered "official acts." But, at first, as the attorneys presented their positions, some court watchers felt certain Donald Trump's position – claiming absolute immunity – would be tossed out. Only after Justices were heard responding to Trump's lawyer's argument did legal experts believe the Court would side with the ex-president who had been criminally indicted in four separate cases.
But even some of the less optimistic critics believed the Court would find some middle ground. It did not, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent: "relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom ... the Court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more."
CNN in an exclusive report now reveals there was no real attempt by Chief Justice John Roberts to broker some form of agreement, consensus, or compromise among the justices, certainly no outreach to the three liberal jurists, and that from the start there was an immediate split along 6-3 partisan lines. The conservative justices – and especially the Chief Justice – wanted to grant presidents "absolute" immunity.
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"Roberts made no serious effort to entice the three liberal justices for even a modicum of the cross-ideological agreement that distinguished such presidential-powers cases in the past. He believed he could persuade people to look beyond Trump," CNN's Chief Supreme Court Analyst Joan Biskupic reported Tuesday.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lawrence Hurley, NBC News' senior Supreme Court reporter, citing the claim Roberts "believed he could persuade people to look beyond Trump," says: "Based on the reaction to the ruling, he failed."
Slate's Mark Joseph Stern, who writes about the courts and the law and is the author of a book on the Roberts Supreme Court, responded to Biskupic's reporting: "Roberts took an extreme view of the presidential immunity case from the start and never bothered to negotiate with the liberals to find a single point of compromise. He was all in for Trump start to finish."
The CNN report reveals a Chief Justice far different from what court watchers for years have claimed exists, that behind closed doors Roberts is working to smooth out ideological disagreements and find common ground to land the Court somewhere in the center of Americans' beliefs. That he disdains rulings solely along partisan lines. That he has a strong desire to preserve and protect the institution he heads.
"It was understandable for outsiders, and even some justices inside, to believe that middle ground might be found on some issues in the immunity dispute and that Roberts would work against any resounding victory for Trump," CNN's Biskupic wrote.
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"Don’t ever suggest that Roberts 'tries to be in the ideological middle' at SCOTUS," warned MSNBC anchor, and legal contributor and corespondent Katie Phang, responding to the CNN report.
"The chief justice’s institutionalist tendency had been cemented over the past two decades," Biskupic added. "He often talked it up, famously admonishing Trump in 2018 that jurists shed their political affiliation once they take the robe, 'We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have it an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.' "
"The chief justice, now 69 and about to begin his 20th term, appears to have abandoned his usual institutional concerns."
Alex Aronson, former Chief Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, now Executive Director of the non-profit organization Court Accountability, appears to agree:
"It’s time for the press and lawyer class to *seriously* reconsider their views about John Roberts as an institutionalist. The man disdains democracy and equality. He has covered up his colleagues’ corruption and turned our Supreme Court into an arm of the Republican Party."
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