Of Death Squads, Dementia, and Desperation

by Julie Kelly

It all started with what might be the dumbest hypothetical ever presented during any court proceeding in the history of ever.

Barely a minute into oral arguments last January related to the question of presidential immunity from criminal prosecution, a judge on the D.C. federal appellate court interrupted the lawyer representing Donald Trump to ask if such immunity would cover an attempt to kill an opponent. “Could a president order Seal Team Six to assassinate a political rival?” Judge Florence Pan, appointed to the court by Joe Biden in 2021, inquired.

As Trump’s attorney attempted to answer, Pan again cut him off. “I asked you a yes or no question. Could a president who ordered Seal Team Six assassinate a political rival who was not impeached, would he be subject to criminal prosecution?”

The answer, of course, was irrelevant; Pan wasn’t looking for a legitimate response. The wife of longtime Democratic Party activist Max Stier, who is working with Joe Biden’s White House to thwart Trump’s plans to reform the civil service if he’s elected in November, Pan was doing the bidding of the regime and Trump-hating media. Her gotcha question resulted in wall-to-wall headlines and praise from all the people she was eager to please.

But that wasn’t the end of her clickbait hypothetical’s usefulness. Even though Justice Samuel Alito directly challenged the veracity of the Seal Team Six scenario during oral arguments before the Supreme Court on April 25, Pan’s imaginary execution order made it into the court’s landmark opinion that significantly narrows a former president’s exposure for criminal prosecution.

The Insufferable Stupidity of Sonia Sotomayor

In a 6-3 decision issued Monday in Trump v US, the immunity question that originated out of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s four-count indictment against Trump related to the events of January 6 and 2020 election, the court concluded a former president cannot be held criminally liable for “official acts” in office.

The court further held that “presumptive immunity” applies to acts outside of established executive and Constitutional authority but still falls within the purview of presidential privileges.

But, the court continued, “[As] for a President’s unofficial acts, there is no immunity. The separation of powers does not bar a prosecution predicated on the President’s unofficial acts.”

The 119-page opinion sounded reasonable enough and represented what many court observers had expected. And far from how the perpetually-perturbed cabal of cable news legal experts have described the matter—anywhere from a “no brainer” to “a slam dunk” to “black and white” that no such immunity exists—the court never before has contemplated whether a former president can be criminally charged.

That’s because prior to June 2023, when Smith handed down his first of three indictments against Trump, no former president had faced criminal charges for any conduct let alone for what he did in the Oval Office.

The majority understood not just the nuances of the existing case but the detrimental impact on the country’s future. “This case is the first criminal prosecution in our Nation’s history of a former President for actions taken during his Presidency,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. “We are called upon to consider whether and under what circumstances such a prosecution may proceed. Doing so requires careful assessment of the scope of Presidential power under the Constitution. We undertake that responsibility conscious that we must not confuse ‘the issue of a power’s validity with the cause it is invoked to promote,’ but must instead focus on the ‘enduring consequences upon the balanced power structure of our Republic.’”

But that degree of caution and circumspection evaded the puerile minds of the three liberal harpies on the highest court. Joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke for the minority.

In reading Sotomayor’s frenzied, angst-ridden, and petulant prose, one can easily envision the full-blown tantrum she almost certainly had in her chambers while authoring the dissent. (The 70-year-old Obama appointee recently admitted she sometimes “cries” over court decisions that don’t go her way and how “every loss truly traumatizes me in my stomach and in my heart.”)

Claiming the opinion “effectively creates a law-free zone around the President”—Sotomayor obviously unaware the leader of the free world and commander-in-chief of the military enjoys certain rights denied to every other American—she presented her own list of what she called “nightmare scenarios.”

“When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution,” she wrote. “Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”

It’s unclear whether Sotomayor threw her cookie from her highchair after that.

But just as one crying toddler quickly leads to a roomful of copycats, Democrats and their media enablers compliantly followed Sotomayor’s lead by insisting the decision paved the way for a president to murder his enemies with impunity.

Death Squads??? Seriously??

Moments after the opinion posted on the court’s website, MSNBC host Chris Hayes tweeted, “SCOTUS answered the Seal Team Six hypo with…yeah that’s fine?” ABC News Supreme Court contributor Kate Shaw told the network’s audience Monday morning that if a president ordered an assassination in his official capacity, he would be protected from prosecution. “I think the dissent is right on this opinion’s own logic. It would be immune, and that is a genuinely chilling implication of this case.”

Democrats in Congress also wasted no time in making their own outlandish claims. Serial liar Adam Schiff issued a typically deceitful statement: “Under this ruling, a president can order the assassination or jailing of their political rival, and be immune. They can take a bribe in exchange for an official act, and still be immune. They can organize a military coup to hold onto power and still be immune.”

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