Alito: [Republican] presidents cannot be held accountable because the criminal justice system is inconvenient for defendants

Paul has already dealt with one of the many remarkable-in-a-bad-way aspects of the oral arguments in Trump v. U.S. — the Court’s Republican justices refusing to engage with the actual facts of the case under consideration. One thing I’d like to highlight is how specious the arguments made by the Republican justices for near-total* presidential immunity for official acts are. Dreeben pointed out that the due process afforded by the criminal justice system provides checks in the case of a bad faith or political prosecution. Alito — dismissing all of these — at one point suggests that even if the checks work they don’t work because going through a trial sucks:

This is just…an argument against attempting to enforce the law against anyone? Indeed, it applies with considerably more force to people who can’t afford expensive lawyers. This bit of proves-too-much is particularly rich coming from the most pro-prosecution justice on the Court — just pure special pleading.

*Kavanaugh’s proposed “compromise” is to allow for criminal prosecutions of presidents abusing their official powers only if federal statutes gave “fair notice” that the law also applies to presidents. I suppose this is so dumb as to not really require elaborate rebuttal, but I’ll hand things over to Justice Jackson anyway:

Clearly, Congress should have anticipated that the Supreme Court would invent a doctrine of total presumptive presidential immunity with no foundation in the text or structure of the Constitution. CHECKMATE LIBS!