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| Blumenthal |
Ever since the elevation to the presidency of Donald Trump on November 8, 2016, the Democrat Party, national and state, has been trumpeting itself as the principal defender of democracy. For eight years, the Democrat Party has energetically pointed to Trump’s imagined disposition to bring the American Republic to an ignominious end in favor of a Stalinist authoritarianism.
When the Supreme Court ruled, largely for administrative
reasons, that partial immunity must be extended to presidents – all presidents,
Republican and Democrat -- if a president is acting within his official
capacity as president, U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal of Connecticut erupted
in a following July 2024 press release: “The Supreme Court has put lawbreaking
presidents like Donald Trump above the law. This cravenly political decision to
shield President Trump grants him a legal armor that no other citizen enjoys [emphasis
mine]. The net effect is not only to delay Trump’s criminal trial, but bestow
an unwise and unjust broad shield for him and other presidents who flout and
flagrantly abuse their office. This is a license for authoritarianism.”
“My stomach turns
with fear and anger that our democracy can be so endangered by an
out-of-control Court. The members of Court’s conservative majority will now be
rightly perceived by the American people as extreme and nakedly partisan hacks
– politicians in robes.”
Blumenthal’s stomach usually turns on a political pivot,
especially during presidential election years. The senator lacks the intestinal
fortitude to put all his political cards on the table. It is quite true that presidents granted
partial immunity may seem to be vested with “a legal armor that no other
citizen enjoys.” It is true that “no other citizen” enjoys the partial immunity
the high court and decades of history have extended to presidents -- because
not all citizens are presidents. It should not take a Harvard degree in
jurisprudence to grasp such fundamental and necessary distinctions.
Blumenthal conveniently glosses over necessary distinctions
because his attention during election years is easily diverted from justice, in
every sense of the word, to politicking.
The editor of the Harvard Crimson while in college, Blumenthal
knows a thing or two about journalism. But any seasoned journalist -- there are
a few left in Connecticut – will understand from Blumenthal’s formulation what
he is not saying. He is not saying that the immunity provided to
Trump grants Trump “a legal armor [a partial dispensation from disabling suits]
that no other president enjoys,” because such a statement would be manifestly
untrue. The court’s sensible and pragmatic decision extends to all presidents.
And it is based on the quite reasonable assumption that if presidents were to
be frequently sued while performing duties in their official capacity as
president, partisan barracuda lawyers would be able to bring the
administrations of all such presidents – not only Trump – to a grinding halt.
Blumenthal, a Harvard educated lawyer, doubtless knows that
the US appeals process is part of the “rule of law.” Democrats have been loudly
proclaiming from the political rooftops for many years that no one – not even
presidents – are above the law. It is well worth remembering from time to time
that neither are presidents below the law. Trump has been found
guilty by a New York jury in a case on appeal that likely will be settled by a
Supreme Court that Democrat Party defenders of democracy like Blumenthal have
expressed an interest in packing with justices more to their liking.
Blumenthal’s tendentious denunciations of so called
“conservative” justices appointed to the high court by Trump are political
claptrap. Neil Gorsuch, who wrote a lucid decision bringing gay employment
under the protection federal laws, has been one of Blumenthal’s bête noirs.
Blumenthal’s opposition to the Gorsuch nomination to the high court was
partisan, temperamental and unjust.
Gorsuch’s decision delivered in Bostock v.
Clayton County, Georgia was an opinion, CNN
noted, “that will change how more than 7 million LGBTQ individuals will live
and work in the United States. It is a watershed moment from an unlikely author
that means gay, lesbian and transgender workers are protected by federal civil
rights law.”
Blumenthal may be an indifferent and politically partisan assessor
of the law, but he is a suburb politician of a sort described by Otto von
Bismarck, who told us in a moment of extreme candor, “People never lie so much
as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.”
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