![]() The ex-president’s assault on the fabric of American democracy is also evident in how he tries to paint efforts to hold him to account for his attempts to destroy the integrity of the 2020 election as a bid by the Biden administration to cheat in the 2024 election. But it is one Trump consistently seeks to overturn. The idea that presidents are subject to the same legal curbs as any other citizen and that every American is equal under the law is a foundation of the US legal and political system. But consistent with his attempt to delay his criminal trials until after November’s election, Trump is likely to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court, which would face one of its most significant rulings on the scope of presidential power in decades if it decided to take up the case.Ĭhutkan rejected several strands of Trump’s argument in her sweeping opinion and got to the core of the ex-president’s vision of power when she wrote that his “four-year service as Commander in Chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens.” In a blow to Trump’s strategy, his power grab was rejected last week in a landmark opinion by US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who will preside over his federal election subversion case that is due to start in March. He’s pleaded not guilty in all of the cases against him and maintains no wrongdoing. The courts may end up being the only institution standing in the way of the ex-president, who faces four criminal trials – two of them over alleged election interference related to his false claims of fraud in the 2020 contest that he lost. Judge guts Trump’s theory of post-presidential immunity ![]() ![]() If the twice-impeached former president wins the Republican nomination and the presidency, it is already clear that a second term would risk destroying the principle that presidents do not hold monarchial power. He has already promised he’d use four more years in the White House to enact personal “retribution” against his political foes. Trump’s concept of the untamable presidency sheds light on how he would behave in a second term given his apparent belief that any action a president might take is, by definition, legal. The entire constitutional premise of US governance could be on the line. This is why the 2024 election will represent such a momentous episode in American history. Given that he has a good chance of winning the presidency again – he’s narrowly leading President Joe Biden in some swing-state polling – it also raises grave constitutional questions over the limits on presidential power. This has huge consequences not simply for the courtroom accounting that is yet to take place over his first turbulent term. The Republican front-runner is for instance arguing in multiple courts that by virtue of his role as a former president, he is immune from the laws and precedents under which other Americans are judged. It’s also revealing of how Trump, who has pledged to use a new term to go after his opponents, sees no limits on his power if he wins next year. The exchange showed how Trump’s political career is built on an edifice of a spectacular falsehood that is nevertheless effective in motivating his voters. Donald Trump is underscoring the profound choice that voters could face next year with expansive claims of unchecked presidential power alongside increasingly unapologetic anti-democratic rhetoric.Ī weekend claim by the ex-president –- who refused to accept the result of the last election –- that Joe Biden is the one destroying democracy earned a rebuke from the current commander-in-chief’s campaign Monday.
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